Posted on 01/20/2004 7:32:52 AM PST by the_devils_advocate_666
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Veterans in Tennessee no longer have to attend smoking cessation classes to boost their sex lives.
For the past three years, officials at Veterans Affairs facilities in Murfreesboro and Nashville required smokers to take cessation classes that lasted up to six weeks before they could get Viagra, which treats impotence, said Laurie Tranter, a spokeswoman for the agency in Washington.
Cigarettes and Viagra don't interact negatively with each other, but smoking can contribute to erectile dysfunction, says Michael Valentino, a pharmacy benefits expert at the VA in Washington.
After getting some calls about the policy, federal officials last week asked leaders at the Tennessee facilities to stop making the classes mandatory, said Tranter. She said local officials agreed.
''The policy was not consistent with our national prescribing guidelines for Viagra,'' Tranter said.
The VA guidelines aren't mandatory, but are carefully researched, leading local VA officials to generally rely on them, Valentino said.
The national guidelines for Viagra state that veterans who need the drug should get four doses per month. It does not say smoking cessation classes should be mandatory, Valentino said.
The change at the Murfressboro and Nashville facilities comes shortly after other hospitals in the regional VA network -- which includes facilities in Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia -- considered but rejected requiring smokers to go through a cessat ion program to get Viagra, Tranter said.
She said 310,000 veterans, or about 7.7 percent of those who get VA pharmacy benefits, got a prescription for Viagra last year.
Michael O'Rourke, a health policy expert at the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, said he was glad to hear about the change in Tennessee.
''We were concerned, because veterans were concerned,'' O'Rourke said.
He applauded the VA's efforts to try to get veterans to stop smoking but said the classes should not have been mandatory. He said many veterans were introduced to cigarettes as service members, since the Pentagon used to dole them out with meals.
He applauded the VA's efforts to try to get veterans to stop smoking but said the classes should not have been mandatory. He said many veterans were introduced to cigarettes as service members, since the Pentagon used to dole them out with meals.
Yep, it is Bush's fault!
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