Troops on Care Packages: More Dip, Please

Over at The Atlantic, freelance journalist Wesley Morgan, who's made four reporting trips to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2007, riffs on care packages sent to troops overseas. They've been known to contain some odd items, from stacks of AARP magazines to tubes of Sensodyne toothpaste. But the most common thing people send is cookies. The only problem with that, Morgan writes, is:

Truthfully, most soldiers have enough cookies. These days, between peanut butter ones, white chocolate and macadamia ones, regular chocolate chip ones, and the little bags of "Famous Amos Bite-Size Cookies," they make their way in bulk to even the most remote and embattled bases.

It's not that soldiers don't appreciate the cookies, but what they really want is dipping tobacco:

Skoal, Kodiak, Copenhagen -- there is plenty of it in the post exchanges on big airfields, and they even make round pouches designed specifically so you fasten your can of dip to your body armor. At the tip of the spear, though -- in the little patrol bases out in Taliban country -- a can of Skoal Wintergreen can be a precious commodity.

The problem is that for awhile earlier this year, it was illegal to send tobacco to deployed troops. But the Postal Service has addressed that issue, so if you really want to make a soldier's day, send over some dip.