More Companies Refusing to Hire Smokers

[♫anna♫]

21 US states have laws allowing employers to refuse to hire smokers.
Discrimination? or a Justified fear of higher health care costs?

[Hunny]

I'm for anything that discourages people from smoking. The more things we put in the way of smoking and being happy about it, the better. In fact, let's just make cigarettes illegal and get it overwith. *thinks* the sale of them should be illegal, not the use - users are just sick (from addiction), we should have sympathy for that and help them out if we can

[Big Lin]

Well, speaking as a smoker who is always careful NOT to inflict second-hand smoke on other people I think that there are two things I'd say about it.

The first is that it's obviously discriminatory to hire or refuse to hire someone for a job based on criteria that are IRRELEVANT to their ability to carry out the job. I'd be just as angry if (for instance) a tobacco factory refused to hire NON-SMOKERS.

Secondly I think this is all about money. Because the US doesn't have a civilised healthcare system it's all run by the Mafiosi who control the health insurance companies and of course they exist to rip off their clients and find as many excuses to increase premiums and refuse to pay out as possible.

For example, in Britain (where we DO have a national health service so that's not YET an issue - though some of the anti-smoking fanatics are seriously suggesting that doctors and hospitals should either refuse to treat smokers or charge them for their treatment) - if you are a hotel that provides smoking areas you will be charged higher insurance premiums than if you don't.

So basically it's the criminals of the healthcare insurance providers in an unholy alliance with the neo-Puritans who want to control every aspect of human behaviour.

[Deleted]

At my work place the smokers are always popping out for their cigarette breaks , seems to eat into the working day some what. Non smokers could probably insist on taking a break for fresh air several times a day , for it to be fair.

[Big Lin]

My attitude is that I'm against irrelevant criteria for hiring or firing people.

Refusing to hire a smoker is as indefensible as refusing to hire a black or gay person.

If they can't do the job because they need to pop out for a cigarette break every five minutes then that's different.

But I used to work as a typesetter inputting ads for a magazine and about half the staff were smokers. We worked a 12-hour night shift and yet all us smokers managed to simply have the normal one hour meal break and two fifteen minute coffee and cigarette breaks. No one kept sneaking outside and the funny thing is that with two exceptions the smokers were consistently the HIGHEST performing inputters in terms of output.

We had a league table posted every day and I was always either first, second or third at worst. Out of a total of thirty people that's pretty good going. Even on my first night i managed to come third (usually I was second - Maggie was superhuman - she could type even faster than me and I can do 100 words a minute!)

So what I'm saying is that being a smoker does NOT and should not impact on your ability to do the job which ought to be the ONLY criteria employers consider.

[Hunny]

Over the long term, smokers - as a group - have significantly higher health care costs. It's been standard practice here for decades that if you're buying insurance and you smoke, you will pay more for the premium. It's only fair since your health problems, and so higher costs, are the result of choice.

Now, to go that step further and refuse to even hire a smoker, well that probably is too far, but it has become increasingly popular here to discourage smoking out of existence by any available mechanism or means. And I cant say I'm against that. It's a worthless addiction. And it only takes a week to withdraw from it. And we're not happy that somehow new generations of smokers (children, that means) are always being enlisted. Seriously, let';s outlaw cigarettes and provide help with withdrawal for anyone so addicted, but let's get rid of the damned things once and for all....is the increasingly more prevalent attitude here. And i cant say I disagree with it. I lost my mother to smoking. I lost my own ability to draw a full breath before I managed to quit. And again, the kids, what about the kids. Surely it's time we made cigarettes illegal to sell.

[Deleted]

Only takes a week to withdraw? As an ex-smoker I can assure you it takes a lot longer to overcome the craving. If it is all about insurance and health costs, are they also making sure that employees take exercise, are not overwwight, don;t drink? Picking on smokers does seem discriminatory.

[Hunny]

Apr 20, 2013 19:11:24 GMT @skylark said:

Only takes a week to withdraw? As an ex-smoker I can assure you it takes a lot longer to overcome the craving. If it is all about insurance and health costs, are they also making sure that employees take exercise, are not overweight, don;t drink? Picking on smokers does seem discriminatory.

When I quit, I had cravings for about 6 weeks, but after the first week they weren't overwhelming.

And yes, I think they (insurance companies) do take regular or excessive alcohol consumption into consideration. With alcoholism being a disease, they would view it as a "pre-existing condition" and so charge a higher premium or impose a higher deductible (two methods of charging more), or in some cases refuse to pay for its treatment. It's all part of the merry world of the health "insurance" scam we insist on staying with.

Employers get charged more for insurance based on things like smoking etc. That takes away from profit. And they also find that smokers get sick more and so cost the company more that way ( a lot more), so I can understand why smokers are undesirable to hire. They're drug addicts, plain and simple, and by choice, and to have them stopping work to go outside and dose..mm...if I were an employer, I wouldn't be happy to have that going on.

So..I may not have a popular opinion on this, I dont know, but I think -as far as being discriminatory - that we should actually discriminate against smoking. But I'd bypass the process of adding to the small ways society has been gradually discouraging it (charging more taxes, making them go outside) and just make the sale or manufacture of cigarettes illegal.

Nicotine is a harmful addictive substance. It serves no other purpose but to addict and extract money at the expense of health. Why should we allow anyone to sell something like that? Let's just ban it and provide patches and make smoking a thing of the past as it ought to be.

I hear addicted people defend it as "a choice", but that's just the addiction talking.

[Deleted]

Not all smokers are addicted. I know a few who don't smoke at all during the day and have the odd one or two cigarettes in the evening, to relax them. One of my neighbours got through one packet per week without feeling the need for more. She was in her 70s, healthy, and had done this most of her life.

Everyone is different, and for some the craving to reach for a cigarette in times of stress goes way beyond six weeks. For example, I found the first week almost the easiest; I was on a buzz while doing it and I chose a time when things were going well in my life. The struggle came after a fortnight without a smoke. Having said that, giving up smoking was the best thing I ever did.

[sadie1263]

I think with healthcare costs it will come down to not hiring the overweight, the underweight, smokers, drinkers, etc.............

Personally I believe we need to do something with the healthcare system because it is outrageous..........but company's don't have any way to cut costs then cut down the high risk people

[DAS (formerly BushAdmirer)]

I was a heavy smoker for years (2 packs a day). I quit smoking four times. The first three attempts failed because I 'dabbled' with a few cigarettes at times of stress or weakness, such as after a great meal with wine flowing and others smoking at the table.

The fourth attempt was finally successful. I haven't smoked for years. Now I find smokers offensive. They stink. Their cars stink. Their houses stink. Their breath stinks. I think it's a great idea to ban smoking from every public place and from work environments.

Quitting successfully is very difficult. It is a chemical addiction.

I was finally successful after reading a magazine article that I took to heart. The author's theory was that it is a chemical dependency. He pointed out that a typical smoker won't even be thinking about having a cigarette when the brain receives a subliminal message: "You want a smoke now." He called these episodes chemical messages caused by your addiction. Each smoker receives so many chemical messages per day, heavy smokers more messages than light smokers.

Suppose you are at a level of addiction such that you receive 50 messages per day on average. If you quit smoking, your total number of messages will begin to slowly decline. You might receive 48 messages the second day, 47 messages the third day, and so on until you reach zero messages perhaps six to eight weeks after you quit.

He pointed out that it is difficult to ignore those messages but people have endured worse things.

Now here is the really important thing that rang so true with me at the time. If you backslide, your chemical sensors are refreshed. For instance, suppose you've gone a whole week without a cigarette. You are making progress. Your chemical message count has already dropped from 50 per day down to about 40 per day. You're having cocktails with friends after work. They're smoking. You backslide and bum a cigarette off one of your friends. Smoking just that one cigarette refreshes your sensors and kicks your chemical message count per day back up to 50.

If you backslide after 5 weeks, that one cigarette might kick your chemical message count up from perhaps 5 per day all the way to around 25 per day.

So the trick really quitting once and for all is to have zero backsliding, never refresh those sensors, and you'll be OK after about six weeks depending on how severe your addiction (number of cigarettes per day).

Even after the six weeks, there will still be an occasional random chemical message. It can happen up to a year or two at times of stress or weakness. You might have only one chemical message in a two week period. You have to resist.

After a couple years there will be no more chemical messages. Your addiction will be fully cured. You will be a happy camper having accomplished something that is very difficult.

[♫anna♫]

Whether or not the following article is factual or accurate it and other such studies discourage employees from hiring smokers. BTW I'm an ex-smoker and we're the most militant non-smokers!
www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/06/04/188631885/that-employee-who-smokes-costs-the-boss-5-800-a-year QUOTE:
That Employee Who Smokes Costs The Boss $5,800 A Year
June 4, 2013
Smoking is expensive, and not just for the person buying the cigs. Employers are taking hard looks at the cost of employing smokers as they try to cut health insurance costs, with some refusing to hire people who say they smoke.

But figures on the cost of smoking have been rough estimates at best, with a very of $193 billion a year nationwide.

Researchers now say they're got much tighter focus on the number: $5,800 per smoker per year.

And the biggest chunk of that comes not in health care costs, but in work lost during all those smoke breaks. That came in at $3,077, based on an estimate of five smoke breaks during the work day.

"The smoking breaks added up to a lot more than we expected," says Micah Berman, an incoming assistant professor of law and public policy at Ohio State University, who led the , which was published in Tobacco Control.

The researchers tried to be conservative in estimating the number of smoke breaks, figuring on five 15-minute breaks in an eight-hour workday, three of which took place during sanctioned break times. So the cost could well be higher.

Other costs include more sick days due to health problems, at $517 per smoker, and $462 a year for lower productivity while working because of withdrawal symptoms, which kick in within 30 minutes of that last drag.

In recent years, some hospitals, including the Cleveland Clinic, have decided to no longer . But more than half of states make it in the hiring process.

Some employers charge higher health insurance premiums to employees who smoke. But that could keep smokers from getting much needed medical care and smoking cessation programs, critics argue. A small number of states have protecting smokers against a provision in the Federal Affordable Care Act that lets smokers be charged more.

"I'm not sure what impact that is going to have on people making decisions starting to smoke or quitting," Berman says of efforts to put the financial hurt on smokers. "Most people start to smoke when they're minors" — not a time when they're thinking about future health insurance premiums. Quitting, he tells Shots, "is extremely difficult and usually takes a lot of attempts to be successful."

But could smokers turn out to be cheaper hires because they , avoiding the need for years of health care and retirement benefits? Not so, Berman says. There's a potential cost savings only if the employer has a defined benefit plan that gives retirees a guaranteed pension, Berman and his colleagues say. Those kinds of retirement plans are increasingly rare.

But if a company has one, they can save $296 a year in pension costs by hiring a smoker, the researchers say. Still, that's far outweighed by the cost of all those smoke breaks.

[Hunny]

Smoking should be made illegal.
And since I feel that way, I'm all for any and all impediments to it being done, including employers 'discriminating' against people who statistically will 1 - get flus and colds more often 2- cough disruptively when they do 3- gradually have less stamina than they ought to 4- as they age, start coming up with very expensive health problems. I dont blame employers for not wishing to put up with or pay for that at all. After all, smoking isnt a hobby, it's drug addiction, and why should an employer be required to hire drug addicts?

[Big Lin]

I don't agree at all, Hunny, and not just because I'm a smoker.

to me it's a libertarian issue and the example of the attempt to ban alcohol in America didn't exactly work that well, did it?

Just as I wouldn't ban smoking or drinking so I'd legalise drugs.

If people want to persist in a habit that ultimately harms them but gives them pleasure then it's no business of the state to try and stop them.

This is one of the many reasons I hate socialism so much; it's every bit as oppressive as conservatism.

Socialists and conservatives are always trying to tell people what NOT to do all the time.

Liberals ask, why not? The authoritarians ask, why?

I know which side I'm on and always WILL be one.

If you are going to ban everything harmful you end up in a world like North Korea and even most of the North Koreans don't like that!

[sadie1263]

I have never been a smoker but I don't believe it should be outlawed. I think people have to be responsible for their own choices. The gov't can not become our fairy godmother and try to protect us from ourselves and that is where we are headed.

[♫anna♫]

I can imagine that work applicants with diabetes, heart conditions, advanced age, obesity, etc.. could cost the company more than smokers. I'm sure a lot of these people are not hired because of their conditions. Such a company policy may be kept secret, if the law forbids it.

I think there's a certain fairness about stating openly that smokers or say diabetis will not be hired! Then these people won't waste their time applying for work at that company.