Workplaces ban not only smoking, but smokers themselves

LogicSoDeveloped

LogicSoDeveloped

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"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.
Each year, smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke causes 443,000 premature deaths and costs the nation $193 billion in health bills and lost productivity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC says 19.3% of U.S. adults smoked last year, down from 42.4% in 1965.

"We're trying to promote a complete culture of wellness," says Marcy Marshall of the Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pa., which begins its nicotine-free hiring next month. "We're not denying smokers their right to tobacco products. We're just choosing not to hire them."
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."

After several companies, including Alaska Airlines, adopted smoker-hiring bans a couple of decades ago, the tobacco industry and the American Civil Liberties Union lobbied for smoker rights. As a result, 29 states and the District of Columbia passed smoker-protection laws.

Some laws exempt non-profit groups and the health care industry, and 21 states have no rules against nicotine-free hiring.

Federal laws don't consider this hiring illegal because they don't recognize smokers as a protected class, says Chris Kuzynski with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

There's no data on how many U.S. businesses won't hire smokers, but the trend appears strongest with hospitals, says Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, a non-profit offshoot of the ACLU that opposes the hiring bans.

Many of the new policies expand on smoke-free workplace rules. At Bon Secours Virginia Health System, more than 300 employees have kicked the habit since its campuses went smoke-free in 2009, and one applicant did so since it began nicotine-free hiring Nov. 30, says administrative director Kim Coleman.

The bottom line will benefit because health care costs for tobacco users are $3,000 to $4,000 more each year than for non-smokers, says Bon Secours' Cindy Stutts. "There's also an impact on productivity," she says, because smokers take more breaks.

Paul Billings of the American Lung Association says he's seen no data that prove nicotine-free hiring gets people to quit. He says cessation programs are a better bet. Still, his group won't hire smokers: "We're non-smoking exemplars."
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source: http://www.usatoday.com/money/indus...th-care-jobs-no-smoking/52394782/1?csp=34news
 
I've been using an electronic cigarette for the last 2 months. I'm pissed about this. I don't see how its fair to ban people completely. I suppose one could even get away with banning on the company's property but how is it fair to control what someone does outside of the office?

Yeah, cigarettes are bad, but taking away the freedom to smoke-even when it can't be proven that the smoker is affecting anyone that themselves-is ridiculous. I mean, if someone is a smoker but only smokes at designated smoking areas and keeps it away from the general public/children, who are they really harming besides themselves?

This is simliar to drug use imo, if someone is doing something that is only harmful to themselves, yet they fully understand and accept this, whats the problem?
 
ah who gives a shit, cigs aren't even addictive... I will debate this till the day I die for I have smoked MY FAIR SHARE of cigs and NOT ONCE! nOT ONCE! (even after smoking everyday for months/years) have I ever got addicted to cigs... I can put em down so easily, it was/still is just a social thing for me i guess...but ever sense the price for a pack of cigs has gone up I usually only buy a couple packs a month (at mostm sometimes i dont buy any, just depends on what I am doing and who I am around). But i used to buy em all the time....i just don't understand how someone can say they are 'addicted' to cigs?! I dunno, maybe its b/c opiate addiction was the first (the TRULY ONLY ADDICTIVE thing on earth IMO) "addiction" I ever really had with a substance so maybe my brain compares all other forms of "addiction" to this.... And if that's the case then all you ex-opiate and current opiate addicts no EXACTLY what i am talkin about..
 
^cause they can't stop even if they want to? it's a compulsive habit and i'm sure whatever dopamine flood smoking causes will create reinforcing behaviour as shown with cocaine or methamphetamine. There's also the problem of easy access, stress, outside influences that keep you smoking. If you do not think nicotine is addictive then i think it has more to do with how you define addiction personally. I'm a light smoker and i don't see how people can smoke a half pack or more per day, i just don't get it but i guess we're not all the same. How are opiates the only TRUE addictive substances? did you forget about benzos and barbituates? alcohol? ghb? dissociatives? and arguably speed, cocaine, crack? Benzo withdrawals are monstrous, i can't imagine how much worse ghb and alcohol are and they are all worse than your average opiate withdrawal.

either way I love how the tobacco lobbyists jump to preserve the rights of smokers lol if only cannabis had that kind of power behind it. I love it when private interest in profit somehow overlaps with what the consumers want, it's like capitalism and greed can work.
 
Herbal~Jah said:
ah who gives a shit, cigs aren't even addictive... I will debate this till the day I die for I have smoked MY FAIR SHARE of cigs and NOT ONCE! nOT ONCE! (even after smoking everyday for months/years) have I ever got addicted to cigs... I can put em down so easily, it was/still is just a social thing for me i guess...but ever sense the price for a pack of cigs has gone up I usually only buy a couple packs a month (at mostm sometimes i dont buy any, just depends on what I am doing and who I am around). But i used to buy em all the time....i just don't understand how someone can say they are 'addicted' to cigs?! I dunno, maybe its b/c opiate addiction was the first (the TRULY ONLY ADDICTIVE thing on earth IMO) "addiction" I ever really had with a substance so maybe my brain compares all other forms of "addiction" to this.... And if that's the case then all you ex-opiate and current opiate addicts no EXACTLY what i am talkin about..
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lol.
 
the stuff going on in this country is bullshit..its daily now that obama does aways with somethin in the constituion i mean yesterday or the day before he changed the requirment of being born here people need to open their eyes and start caring before were living in a fuckin communist dictatorship
 
This is absolutely fair.
If they are not going to hire cannabis users, heroin users, etc., then they should also not hire tobacco users.
Of course, they should also not hire caffeine users, and probably sugar users as well.
Which leaves two Mormon guys to do all the work.

BTW, saying that something "is not addictive" because you have had the ability to quit it multiple times seems like a huge leap. Did you know that all people's bodies respond to drugs in different ways? And that there is a lot of research saying that (most?) people will find tobacco use addictive?
 
Jean-Paul said:
lol.
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I'm just laughing at HerbalJah.

slimvictor said:
This is absolutely fair.
If they are not going to hire cannabis users, heroin users, etc., then they should also not hire tobacco users.
Of course, they should also not hire caffeine users, and probably sugar users as well.
Which leaves two Mormon guys to do all the work.

BTW, saying that something "is not addictive" because you have had the ability to quit it multiple times seems like a huge leap. Did you know that all people's bodies respond to drugs in different ways? And that there is a lot of research saying that (most?) people will find tobacco use addictive?
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Coffee and cigarettes are legal dude. You don't even need a prescription for them.
 
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