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.
