I wonder if any actual employer has hard data showing that employees who smoke, cost the company more in medical care than nonsmokers.
Most "health care costs" are actually "death care costs" as the average citizen expends most of his lifetime medical expenses on his final illness. As most of us enjoy expensive hospital care during this illness, I've always been skeptical of claims that non-smokers' insurance incurs fewer costs than smokers. When people make this claim, I would prefer they prove it, rather than depend upon a vague argument that comes down to "everyone knows."
So I believe the cost claim is an excuse, one that sounds plausible to our propagandized populace.
The real reason? Bullying the unpopular. The Boomers fancy themselves free of the bigotry they attribute to their parents' generation. They just found new targets.
On the other hand, as a libertarian, I believe an employer has the right to determine the conditions of employement. I would simply prefer they would choose to eschew such bigotry. While it is the government, not the citizens, that is restrained by the limits imposed by the Constitution, I would prefer the citizens (who are the actual government) would hold themselves to the standard they expect of their rulers. Did we so, unconstitutional legislation would be a rarity.
A truly excellent editorial, Dr. Siegel. It might have some actual real-world impact if you sent it as an op ed to the paper that published the original item, and/or cut it down into a Letter to the Editor.
I congratulate Crown Laboratories for implementing a policy that will almost certainly result in smoking cessation by all (or nearly all) of its employed cigarette smokers.
And smokers who desire a job at Crown Laboratories will also benefit, as this new policy will give them the extra incentive they've been searching for to finally quit smoking.
Hopefully, more employers will begin exhibiting that type of concern about the health and welfare of their employees.
Concern, Bill? They just put them out of a job. Do you really kid yourself with these arguments?
Brett,
As one who has actually communicated and consulted with thousands of employers on smoking policy issues (including smoking cessation and smokefree hiring policies) over the past 20 years, I can assure you that my posting will prove accurate.
But since you profess expertise, perhaps you could reveal your experience on these issues.
Concern about the health and welfare of their employees? Since they don't hire them, they aren't their employees, are they?
How ironic, shouldn't they also be concerned about the health of their customers?
These violations cause your drug products to be adulterated
I fail to see how eliminating a smoker automatically and categorically from a pile of applications for a job helps that person or shows a concern for that individual. What it does it discriminate against the individual and inappropriately invade their privacy.
I suppose that President Bush could make the argument that spying on law-abiding American citizens without court approval is appropriate too, because it is, after all, showing a concern for those individuals is it not to protect them from a terrorist attack?
"And smokers who desire a job at Crown Laboratories will also benefit, as this new policy will give them the extra incentive they've been searching for to finally quit smoking."
Bill, sorry in advance if what i say is going to offend you, but i find your words utterly disgusting. In my opinion, pretending to advocate discrimination for the good of those who are discriminated is hypocrisy as its worst.
If any smokers want to work at Crown enough to quit smoking, I'll be pleased to send a letter of recommendation to Crown's personnel office in support of the applicant.
I suspect that Crown would give extra special attention to and interest in any job applicants that informed Crown they quit smoking in order to qualify for employment.
Employers like job applicants that go the extra mile in order to become better qualified for job openings.
That's also why most employers prefer hiring college graduates.
I find it ironic that the university professors who have criticized employers for requiring successful job applicants to be smokefree haven't similarly criticized
universities for job discrimination (when hiring professors) against people who don't have lots of college degrees and published articles.
While some would respond that multiple college degrees and published articles are legitimate grounds for job discrimination by universities, which I would agree with.
But the key issue is who gets to determine the job qualifications
for different jobs. Just as I think universities should be free to determine that lots of college degrees are required for various job openings, I think that all other employers should be free to determine their own job qualifications for various job openings the may have.
Apples and oranges, Bill. By telling the truth (and the truth is that you hate smokers so you're happy to see them rejected or fired because they are smokers) you would at least get the respect due to anyone for being honest.
So employers are free to establish whatever qualifications they desire relating to smoking status?
Fine... but only if employers are ALSO free to establish whatever policies they desire relating to allowing - or prohibiting - smoking within and on their premesis...
Your selective support for property rights is pretty arrogant, Bill.
Civil justice involves the prioritization of rights.
When it comes to these conflicts, most courts and increasingly more legislative bodies concur that the right to a smokefree workplace trumps private property rights of those who want to expose people to smoke pollution.
Regarding smokefree hiring policies, half of the state legislatures have rejected legislation that would grant smokers special rights to trump the rights of employers to require successful job applicants to either become or to remain smokefree.
Even the states that enacted those cigarette industry protection bills
more than a decade ago exempted many different employers.
Bill--
I don't profess expertise. I simply know right from wrong in the context of a nation dedicated to the principle of individual liberty. The opinions of experts are moot in that situation, as their only prerogative is to advise.
The only people who profess expertise are those who want to deflect attention from the fact that they are advocating tyranny. I do not defer to experts; in fact, those who are quick to claim it save me a lot of time, as I know immediately know they are defrauding me.
Remember that the spurious arguments by which activists assuage their consciences for their tyrannous behavior do not fool their victims. They do waste a lot of time, however. So much for your extra ten years of life!
As for the anti-smoker's overdeveloped sense of noblesse oblige, institutional nobility is not a feature of the American polity.
This fact does not prevent many professional experts from comporting themselves as members of an aristocracy.
It is past time to leave funding of the experts' activities to the private sector. To force a citizen to financially support a cause he does not believe in is raw tyranny.
I know twentieth century history has convinced many that anything short of mass slaughter is not tyranny, and therefore OK. The founders disagreed. They revolted over a tax policy that amounted to 3%.
While Brett may indeed be the best judge of right and wrong regarding individual liberty (but I strongly doubt it), his arguments (and those of others) claiming that employer's shouldn't be able to consider off-the-job smoking as a variable in making hiring or firing decisions are in conflict with rulings by various state courts, federal courts and the US Supreme Court.
So perhaps those who desire to elevate employee smoking to a legally protected right (that trumps already recognized legally protected rights of employers) should figure out how to overturn those court rulings before claiming that they possess special knowledge of what this Nation's founding fathers considered tyranny.
The irony quotient: A business owner is allowed to hire or fire-it's their business, whatever goes on in their business-smoking or not-it's their property. So-don't hire smokers, fire smokers is their right.
A business owner is allowed to hire only smokers? and have only smokers on their property? WAIT-that's not allowed in many places now in the world, much less in the US.
IRONIC isn't it?
Interestingly, the only states in America where it is illegal for an employer to hire only smokers are those states that enacted cigarette industry sponsored legislation that prohibits employers from considering whether or not an employee is a smoker or not.
If it weren't for the efforts of public health advocates to defeat that anti freedom legislation, it would be illegal in every state for employers to hire only smokers.
The smokers reading this blog simply don't appreciate the sound public policy activism done on their behalf by many public health advocates.
You could pay a visit to those fired at Weico and explain them that it has been done on their behalf. I'm sure they will appreciate it.
I really think it's quite silly that so many folks responding to this op-ed have used terms such as "tyranny" and "discriminatory" and "rights" in the context of tobacco use.
No one has a "right" to use tobacco products, rather they have choices to use these products or not to use it. It's similar to the way we have a choice of which route to use on the drive home or to work and at which times of the day we choose to use which routes. If you complain about the most common route, for example, that it is too busy, congested, whathaveyou, then you can certainly choose another route.
Likewise, with this sunscreen manufacturer that weeds out smokers during the hiring process. This company is simply using its choices wisely -- to bar smokers from employment based on public health policies and those policies' scientific underpinnings.
Likewise, applicants have the choice to NOT use tobacco, to smoke or to answer honestly the questions about their tobacco use habits and to NOT work for companies that have such a policy.
Claiming that the company's policy constitutes a "tyranny" is simply ridiculous and I would compare it to pro-segregation forces circa 1964 making the claim that Civil Rights activism exacted a "tyranny" on whites' rights.
Regardless of the situation, the circumstance, many of those posting here are making ridiculous straw man arguments.
Commenting by HaloScan
