I get banning smoking at the workplace. But employers should not have the power to control what people do in their private time. But USA Today has an interesting story out in which so many companies ban smoking by their workers wherever it happens, that to the point that they won’t hire smokers at all. From the story:
As bans on smoking sweep the USA, an increasing number of employers — primarily hospitals — are also imposing bans on smokers. They won’t hire applicants whose urine tests positive for nicotine use, whether cigarettes, smokeless tobacco or even patches. Such tobacco-free hiring policies, designed to promote health and reduce insurance premiums, took effect this month at the Baylor Health Care System in Texas and will apply at the Hollywood Casino in Toledo, Ohio, when it opens this year. “We have to walk the walk if we talk the talk,” says Dave Fotsch of Idaho’s Central District Health Department, which voted last month to stop hiring smokers
This is beginning to look a lot like social fascism to me. Of course, we’ve always had disfavored groups who suffered from such oppression to general cheering, against gays for example. But I thought we were finally putting all that behind us. Instead, we are apparently just changing the identity of our victims.
The excuse for this discriminating is that smokers raise the cost of health care. And indeed, they do. But you anti smoking warriors had better understand that the you-can’t-work-here blade can cut many heads. If health costs and social disfavor can be grounds for denying work, a lot of people can become unemployable. Some agree:
The policies stir outrage, even in the public health community. “These policies represent employment discrimination. It’s a very dangerous precedent,” says Michael Siegel, a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health. He says the restrictions punish smokers rather than helping them quit. “What’s next? Are you not going to hire overly-caffeinated people?” asks Nate Shelman, a smoker and Boise’s KBOI radio talk show host whose listeners debated the topic last month. “I’m tired of people seeing smokers as an easy piñata.”
Why not? It’s so much fun to pick on the socially disdained. Just go to any high school and observe.
As I have done before, let me put it in ways that the anti smoking brigade can understand: Since promiscuity raises health care costs and leads to illness–and in a much quicker time than smoking, I might add–should employers also be able to dictate the number of sexual partners people have outside the workplace, their genders, and their use and their genders? No? I agree. Nor should they be able to ban smoking by their employees on their own time and away from work.
The story reports that 29 states now have smokers rights laws to prevent workplace discrimination. Our society is so confused.
January 6th, 2012 | 12:02 pm
Yet another reason why we need further health care reform to remove or at least weaken the link between employment and the availability of health care.
Although, as a non-smoker who has had to work with smokers, I have to say I’d prefer not to. It’s somewhat like working with an alcoholic in that it’s difficult for the addict to keep the effects of their addiction out of the workplace. I’ve had to cover for smokers taking excessive breaks or sick time, and I’ve had to cover for alcoholics off on benders. And, I’m not much on having a smoker hang up his stinky jacket next to mine. Or me.
But if they do manage to keep the harmful side effects away from work, then I don’t think they should be punished at work. And we definitely need to make sure they have full access to health care, particularly addiction treatment.
BTW, I wouldn’t call this “social disfavor.” Anti-smoking actions are not racism or tribalism. They’re an attempt to keep one group of people (smokers) from trying to pass the negative effects of their bad choices to others. It’s not about identity, it’s about choices. There may be some cultural elements, but mostly it’s about the smoke.
Audrey Silk Reply:
January 7th, 2012 at 1:21 am
@padraig, with all due respect, you are misinformed. It is entirely “social disfavor,” otherwise known as bigotry. The “negative effects” you note have been manufactured as a tool to bring societal pressure — through fear-mongering — on smokers to quit. It’s absolutely about identity. It’s no different then when they tried to discriminate against blacks by asserting the reason for separate water fountains was due to preventing the “diseased” from affecting others.
padraig Reply:
January 7th, 2012 at 4:37 pm
@Audrey Silk, It’s very different from the drinking fountains. If a black person uses the same drinking fountain as me, I derive no ill effects. None were cited. But if I have to breathe the exhaust fumes of a smoker, there are demonstrable ill effects for me. Doesn’t matter who the smoker is, all that matters is the smoke. The identity of the smoker is irrelevant.
Unless of course your identity is completely defined by your smoking, which would be pretty sad.
Audrey Silk Reply:
January 7th, 2012 at 7:06 pm
@padraig, what don’t you understand? It doesn’t matter if YOU don’t think sharing a water fountain with a black person will cause ill effects (of course it doesn’t). But don’t change history by what YOU think. The excuse for the separate fountains was in fact exactly the same as it is for, as you put it, “to keep one group of people (smokers) from trying to pass the negative effects of their bad choices to others.” Believing you’re suffering ill effects from “a smoker hang[ing] up his stinky jacket next to mine. Or me,” is no different than those who believed that sharing a water fountain with blacks will cause disease. Both are/were entirely false and an instrument for fostering prejudice. It’s fascinating how people who are ordinarily intelligent allow a personal bias to supercede it.
I can cite plenty of paper/studies that counter the claims that a nonsmoker’s exposure to cigarette smoke is harmful (and more ridiculous to believe that “thirdhand” nonsense that defies The Dose Makes The Poison where a coat next to yours is contaminating it) but I’ll spare the board and our host that space by summing it up with just one:
“[T]he evidence linking ETS with chronic disease is much more speculative than that…simply put, the role of ETS in the development of chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease is uncertain and controversial [and your assertions are] without scientific basis.” — Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, American Council on Science and Health
padraig Reply:
January 8th, 2012 at 3:35 pm
@Audrey Silk, I’ve suffered asthma all my life as a direct result of exposure to my parents’ secondhand smoke. As soon as I was not exposed to it, my asthma became milder.
And by the way, my father died of lung cancer and my mother’s on constant oxygen support due to 45 years of smoking.
So I could not care less what your phony study said.
There are plenty of studies that do show health problems from secondhand smoke. Were there ever any to show harm from sharing drinking fountains with black folks? I bet Dr Whelan could work one up for you if you gave her enough grant money.
Audrey Silk Reply:
January 8th, 2012 at 6:10 pm
@padraig, stooping to funding is intellectually dishonest. If funding is the litmus test then anti-smoker studies are just as suspect simply on that merit. Big Pharma that sells nicotine replacement has a great interest in getting people off the tobacco industry’s nicotine and onto theirs. They fund much in Tobacco Control. So until you analyze the science itself — as I and others have done with the anti-smoker studies — I dismiss such superficial retorts.
You offer anecdotal stories. For every one that claims someone they know got sick from smoking there’s another where someone didn’t. But we’re not here talking about primary smoking in relation to illness (it was discrimination) so why are you dragging that in? In defense of discrimination (in the workplace) you DID drag in second and thirdhand smoke so let’s look at your personal anecdotal story regarding asthma. Again, for every one of those is a kid who’s grown up around smokers and has had NO ill effects. But I’ll go you farther than anecdotal stories and into the heart of the Surgeon General who I’m sure you love. I trust nothing the SG says but since you do, you’ll find on page 400 (pdf pg. 419) of the 2006 report:
“The evidence is suggestive but not sufficient to infer a causal relationship between secondhand smoke exposure from parental smoking and the onset of childhood asthma.”
I have not had the time to try and track down if there were actual studies produced to support the prejudice against blacks but history records that was at least the ideology — advanced by people in respectable positions — and that there were likely position papers written. But just because one discriminating group (anti-smokers) have employed the use of studies as a tool when another hadn’t (and we don’t know that it hadn’t) makes it no less the same ideology at work. If it’s studies you want to level the playing field I’ll have to resort to another analogy I wanted to avoid — but Hitler did employ doctors and scientists to level the same charge against the Jews. They were not to even get their hair cut in barber shops because they would spread disease. Get people to fear they’re being harmed by them so that they will accept, condone, and encourage the ensuing discrimination.
No matter though. You’d originally written it’s about “choices” and then tried to cut out “identity” and focus on “smoke.” Except it’s BECAUSE of my CHOICE to smoke that I’ve been IDENTIFIED as a SMOKER — now part of a broadly painted GROUP, not an individual — that this GROUP is being discriminated against in employment. The “smoke” is the leverage by disciminators to facilitate it along.
padraig Reply:
January 9th, 2012 at 4:19 pm
@Audrey Silk, wow, you’re a smoker? That’s a shock.
While you’re surveying the medical and psychological research, may I suggest you look up “cognitive dissonance.” In brief, it’s the process where a person who does not wish to accept normal perceptions actually alters those perceptions. Kind of like looking at the world through smoky lenses.
Audrey Silk Reply:
January 9th, 2012 at 9:52 pm
@padraig, right, while I study the science your only interest is “perception.” I think that says it all.
padraig Reply:
January 10th, 2012 at 12:15 pm
@Audrey Silk, You’re only studying the “science” that supports your misguided perceptions. I think THAT says it all.
Here’s an example of how your perceptions don’t even pass common sense tests:
“Big Pharma that sells nicotine replacement has a great interest in getting people off the tobacco industry’s nicotine and onto theirs. They fund much in Tobacco Control. ”
If people don’t start smoking, who’s going to buy Big Pharma’s nicotine patches? That makes no economic sense, and when you talk about Big Pharma and the tobacco companies, economic sense is the only sense there is.
Wouldn’t it be easier for you to quit smoking? Then you wouldn’t have to twist yourself in knots explaining why smoking is harmless, and making yourself out to be the victim of others instead of, well, yourself.
Audrey Silk Reply:
January 10th, 2012 at 6:07 pm
@padraig, sigh, it’s typical that you both jump all over the place AND conveniently ignore what’s previously written.
To wit: “So until you analyze the science itself — as I and others have done with the anti-smoker studies…” Got that? I analyze YOUR studies equally.
ROFL… **I** have no common sense?? You just tried to jump about 100 years into the future after it’s fantastically alleged that there will be no more smoking. Let’s just ignore the millions of people smoking NOW (and in our lifetime) that the Prohibitionists are trying to get to stop and the decades of money made off the profits of “aids” by Pharma??? Wow, no wonder you can so easily claim others “twist” when you’re a master of (though not having mastered) it yourself. That’s called projecting.
Others (since I am no longer really here to debate you but to appeal to others) will read that I’ve never said PRIMARY smoking is “harmless” and that again you are tossing up strawmen and doing so by putting words in my mouth.
My legal choice HAS made me a victim of others who for an inexplicable reason have no tolerance for my private choice. Your logic would have us blaming scantily clad girls for being raped because THEY chose to wear such revealing clothes. Noooo, they’re not the victims of OTHERS. They brought on the assault THEMSELVES, right?
Because of my legal choice to smoke I’m fair game? I brought your intolerant opinion on myself? There’s only ONE right way to think (“why don’t you quit smoking?”)?? Imposing your will on others is what’s, to use your word again, “twisted.” I will never ever understand why anyone cares what someone else does. I do not care what YOU do short of criminality. Is something missing in lives that they have to put their nose into others’ lives?
This is the last post I’ll reply to — leaving any follow-up comment you might have to the readers to decide its merits.
padraig Reply:
January 12th, 2012 at 7:32 pm
@Audrey Silk, yeah, I didn’t know until now that smoking causes insanity, too.
How often do you have to buy new SHIFT KEYS for your computer? Geez.
January 6th, 2012 | 2:32 pm
Nice blog Wesley and couldn’t agree more. Smoking continues to be an easy target for the nanny-staters, but they might have more trouble when it comes to electronic cigarettes, so see http://www.ecigwerks.blogspot.com for more.
January 6th, 2012 | 6:12 pm
Unfortunately you can’t pee-test for sluttiness. (Luckily for some)
padraig Reply:
January 6th, 2012 at 8:01 pm
@holyterror, or rudeness and a total lack of class, luckily for you.
holyterror Reply:
January 8th, 2012 at 12:20 pm
@padraig, Dear Padraig.
I am totally horrible at internet banter because, in the end, I won’t go as far as many other people will to get in the insult. So, continuing in the category, that is Lucky For You.
David Reply:
January 7th, 2012 at 10:22 am
@holyterror, you are correct; there is no urine analysis to determine ease of sexual conquest. I believe we have to infer sluttiness from various visual clues – mainly, a tattoo (or ‘tat’) of a rose or butterfly, etc, placed sub-scapular or lumbar, for example.
holyterror Reply:
January 8th, 2012 at 12:16 pm
@David, Interesting that when I say “sluttiness” you picture a woman’s tattoos. What about the male sluts?! Don’t they get consideration?
And what will happen if Wesley’s argument falls on the right ears and such things come to pass?
HistoryWriter Reply:
January 9th, 2012 at 11:28 am
@holyterror,
Please see: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slut (among others). The term is inapplicable to males.
HW
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
January 9th, 2012 at 11:50 am
You are such a troll.
HistoryWriter Reply:
January 12th, 2012 at 7:42 pm
@Wesley J. Smith,
And you’re an insufferable bore. Can’t you think ofg anything more imaginative to say?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
January 12th, 2012 at 8:12 pm
Act like an adult. Howaks that?
holyterror Reply:
January 9th, 2012 at 10:08 pm
@HistoryWriter, Huh, my cohort hs always used it for both, although more for women than men. I would never have made my (totally sarcastic and probably unnecessary) comment if I had thought it was only applicable to women.
Male sluttiness is AT LEAST as destructive to a corporation as female, amiright?
January 6th, 2012 | 6:55 pm
There are few jobs left for drones, they have mostly been automated or computerized out of existence. Today’s job market requires good judgement. Given what we’ve known for so long now about smoking, smokers demonstrate judgmental shortcomings. Do you want folks with poor judgement working for you…?? I don’t… FWIW, I believe caffeine has been shown to improve cognitive performance. And most likely ditto for those more sexually fulfilled…
January 6th, 2012 | 11:14 pm
Have these places also banned the use of scents? As a scent sensitive individual, can I expect others to give up their perfumes and colognes for my health?
Banning smoking in the workplace and in public buildings has my support. But discrimination against smokers in hiring practices stinks worse than cigarette smoke.
Jespren Reply:
January 7th, 2012 at 1:18 pm
@Janine, actually there are a huge amount of ‘scent free’ workplaces in at least some parts of the country. I’ve worked in 2 places that banned all fragrances, one because someone there was rather allergic and the other just as company policy. One of them even had a partial ban on flowers and plants(nothing pollen producing). So I could (theoretically) get fired for wearing perfume, but coming into the office reeking of cigarette smoke was okay.
padraig Reply:
January 7th, 2012 at 4:39 pm
@Janine, Most managers at some point have to take a particular person aside and have “the hygiene talk” with them. Not a pleasant situation.
January 6th, 2012 | 11:26 pm
Don–
Be assured, given that you haven’t offered a scintilla of proof for all you said, I think I would, if I were you avoid discussing the judgmental of smokers.
It is apparent one need not smoke to suffer the affliction of which you speak.
padraig Reply:
January 7th, 2012 at 4:43 pm
@jb, jb, smokers choose to pay $10-20 a day to acquire a physical addiction on the level of crack smoking with side effects of cancer and smelling bad. What part of that choice represents good judgment in your view, other than the fact that you made it?
January 6th, 2012 | 11:27 pm
judgmental shortcomings – sorry Wes
January 7th, 2012 | 3:12 am
If you own a business, you ought to be able to employ, or not employ, whomever you wish, for whatever reasons you wish. It’s called *Free*Enterprise*. Let the marketplace sort out the wisdom/efficacy of your HR department policies. This is the way it was BACK WHEN THE COUNTRY WORKED…Before EEOC, before ADA, and other abusive regulation.
January 7th, 2012 | 10:30 am
So, we allow employers to discriminate for one type of drug use (THC, for example, which is far less harmful than nicotine) outside of work, so why should nicotine usage be exempt?
Obviously one is legal and the other (usually) isn’t.
But, I don’t think the employer is entirely concerned with legality of substance (yes, an employee could get raided and sent to the big house and you have to re-train a new hire, etc). I think the employer is looking out for health costs and insurance over the long-haul.
Is society confused because we have bad laws on substance usage, or because employers want to do what they think is in their best interest?
January 7th, 2012 | 11:10 am
Can you check your spam box please?
January 7th, 2012 | 11:12 pm
But, I don’t think the employer is entirely concerned with legality of substance (yes, an employee could get raided and sent to the big house and you have to re-train a new hire, etc). I think the employer is looking out for health costs and insurance over the long-haul.
The problem here is that one of two scenarios inevitably arises out of this precedent.
If the concern for health costs and insurance is applied consistently, then employers will increasingly discriminate until we all have to live risk-free, “approved” lives or else be unable to find work. After everyone gives up smoking, they will start targeting fat people, motorcyclists, high-risk sports enthusiasts, etc. until it’s just a given that we have no permission to live our lives any way we want if we rely on wages for our living.
If, on the other hand, these concerns are not applied consistently, then we have bullying and scapegoating – because honestly smokers aren’t guilty of anything other people aren’t guilty of. If it’s expensive for us to pursue high-risk behaviors in our off hours, then why punish/ostracize cigarette smokers but not other people who do equally high-risk things?
I usually take great care with determining my opinion on such issues, because it’s usually not a simple good vs. bad, but rather two good arguments in opposition. In this case, both cases have merit: employers should be allowed to hire and fire on whatever basis is best for their business, but there are also real concerns with this practice. A culture where the majority of workers can’t live a decent life is a culture with a problem that demands resolution, and to me being told how to live as a precondition of employment is not compatible with my notion of a decent life (which requires a certain level of both freedom and just plain fairness)…it’s a real dilemma IMO.
January 8th, 2012 | 4:51 pm
I would like to hear the positive health benefits of smoking that is widely supported by evidence.
There are moderate benefits to caffeine and alcohol.
Responsible people can drink coffee or tea. Smokers on the other hand know it is bad for them. They know it harms. They know it is unhealthy. It is very addictive. Don’t get me started on the littering.
Why are we comparing blacks to smokers? You choose to smoke. Do you choose to be black? No. Do you choose to be gay? No…
Smoking is a choice and smokers are harming others because they are inadvertently manipulating young teenagers to pick up the habit.
January 8th, 2012 | 10:55 pm
What a perfect opportunity to disassociate from what the gummint encouraged in the ’40′s health in lieu of wages – company paid medical care.
There was never such a thing. Workers were merely underpaid per hour or in salary to cover the cost.
Now the cost (for all the obvious reasons – gummint being first and the insurance lobby close on its heels) is outstripping what the wage compensation would be.
So businesses, who watch the bottom line, could care less about the social impact of their decisions . . . smokers, you be gone.
We joked about this fascism 25 years ago when restaurants were beginning to set aside no smoking areas. We knew where it was going.
The anti-smoking crusaders are living proof that many Americans have never overcome their puritanical past, with or without the faith.
I work for myself, so I am not beholden to some do-gooder’s opinion as to how to live. That was by design – I saw this coming, not merely with smoking.
Wait till body fat measurements inform some avid anti-smokers they no longer have a job.
I will try very hard no to chuckle at your misfortune.
Jas – the statistics just do not bear out your conclusion whatsoever. But it sounded good to you, so . . .
January 9th, 2012 | 11:24 am
Nicotine is a drug. An employer has the right to maintain a drug-free work environment, to make passing a drug test a condition of employment, and to refuse to hire drug addicts. I don’t see what the big deal is about not hiring smokers.
HW
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
January 9th, 2012 at 11:51 am
Except if I said there was no big deal you would scream about discrimination. You are such a troll.
HistoryWriter Reply:
January 12th, 2012 at 7:44 pm
@Wesley J. Smith,
And you are such a colossal bore.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
January 12th, 2012 at 8:10 pm
I don’t think so or youi’d go away.
January 10th, 2012 | 8:29 am
Why are we comparing blacks to smokers? You choose to smoke. Do you choose to be black? No. Do you choose to be gay? No…
The amazing part about this control-from-on-high: you don’t get to decide what is viewed as “a choice” vs. what is viewed as acceptable or justifiable. It will not only be handed down from above, but will be subject to change – sometimes on ridiculously short notice.
You really assume that your sexual choices are nobody’s business but your own, even as you judge (scapegoat) smokers right when you’re told to?
The promiscuous have always been more of a public health threat than smokers ever were.
January 10th, 2012 | 8:30 am
Please see: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slut (among others). The term is inapplicable to males.
Dictionaries follow usage, not the other way round.
January 10th, 2012 | 8:33 am
Nicotine is a drug. An employer has the right to maintain a drug-free work environment, to make passing a drug test a condition of employment, and to refuse to hire drug addicts. I don’t see what the big deal is about not hiring smokers.
Drug-free workplaces discriminate against users of illegal drugs.
For employers to claim – and have – the right to discriminate against users of legal drugs really changes a great deal.
HistoryWriter Reply:
January 14th, 2012 at 9:17 pm
@Blake,
Not all forms of discrimination are illegal. For example, FAA regulations on pilots of commercial aircraft certainly discriminate against alcoholics, just as requirements that school teachers and healthcare workers be free of active tuberculosis discriminates against some disabled people. The usual practice in American jurisprudence has been to balance one’s rights against other important considerations, such as public safety. Since second-hand smoke in close quarters can pose a health hazard, and since the US government has already determined that smoking is detrimental to one’s health, employers are within their rights to maintain a smoke-free work environment.
HW
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact