May Employers Ethically Refuse to Hire Smokers?

post by Paul Kelleher

From USA Today:

More job-seekers are facing an added requirement: no smoking — at work or anytime.

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.

When I read a story like this, I always think first of the following passage from Michael Marmot's The Status Syndrome (pp. 68-9):

Here is a more contemporary picture of poverty. In an American city a young woman, let's call her Patty, sits and contemplates her life. She recalls that a researcher, doing a health survey, came to the local grocery store, where Patty works as a cashier, and asked her how much exercise she did. She laughed. Most of the day is spent sitting or standing behind the till. What about exercise at home? She lives in a crowded inner-city tenement building. She won't let the children play on the strip of asphalt nearby. Apart from broken glass, she is worried about the violence in this part of town.

Patty's reverie continues. The children come home from school and ask if they can go swimming. It would certainly relieve the long oppressive hours from Friday night to Monday morning that is the lot of a Single mother with two children. But joining a fitness club had been out of the question. They might as easily have a vacation on the moon. There is the Y. But it is an hour on the bus. With the bus, entry, snacks, and sodas for the kids, the trip would cost $30. A king's ransom, but it would fill a couple of hours at least. Then what? She and the children sit cooped up in their two bedroom apartment going quietly stir-crazy. Not so quietly. The children yell at each other and start to fight again. Patty lights another cigarette.

As she contemplates the week ahead, she thinks that the boy needs new sneakers. Why they have to be the ones with special laces, when he never does them up, is beyond her. Something about all the other kids having them. The girl has been to three different friends for dinner and a sleepover in the last month. She wants friends home to her place. Four children, pizzas all round ... Where is that money going to come from? Patty lights another cigarette. She remembers when she splurged and bought herself a pair of designer jeans. It was Mother's Day before last. Gallows humor of the Single mother to buy herself clothes that she could not afford on Mother's Day.

As she thinks about it, she realizes that the only money she spends on herself is the cigarettes. When she took the children to the clinic the other day, the nurse told her, for the umpteenth time, that she shouldn't be smoking: bad for her health and a bad example for the children. The hell with that, thought Patty, take the cigarettes away and what am I left with? That clinic nurse should try leading my life, and see if she's still worried about lung cancer in thirty years' time. I have enough trouble getting through next week.

Lots of "lifestyle choices" have effects on health care costs. A provocative example I cite in the classroom is a employee's choice to have a child. I don't know how the added costs of this choice stack up to the added costs of smoking; I need to look into that further. But putting the examples side by side makes for a useful thought experiment: do we have the same intuitions in each case about whether it's OK to refuse to hire the potentially health-costly applicant? If not, why not? If it is because having children is a "respectable" choice while smoking is not, then I would urge that we spend more time thinking about passages like Marmot's, as well as all the information we have about how people become smokers and what makes it so hard for them to stop.

I don't insist that these Marmot-inspired thoughts are dispositive. There's of course a lot more to say on this issue. As always, I'd welcome your thoughts and a continued discussion in the comments section.

Comments

[Brad F]

Paul
While I cant say I am completely comfortable with the policy, I can live with it.

The same way we tax tobacco--its regressive as folks of lesser means take up the habit in greater numbers. One justification is its impact as a negative deterrent for future smokers. By the same means, if more companies adopt this policy, might it have a similar effect?

Putting it bluntly, shorter term pain for some, longer term gain for many others? The landscape will be such that smoking acts as an obstacle for job ascertainment. Granted, this might impact a sliver of indivduals negatively, but the alternative is the status quo.

Will a policy like this, if widely adopted, allow greater number of folks to take the fight back to big tobacco at a lesser cost, with less effort? The states have stalled it appears, although some pockets of success (NYC) break through with herculean efforts. On that latter count, difficult to scale. I understand that companies are not attempting to wage a war with the tobacco companies--they are looking out for #1--but it certainly is a "positive" externality..

Brad

[Paul Kelleher]

Brad, you write:

"Granted, this might impact a sliver of indivduals negatively, but the alternative is the status quo."

This assumes there are just two options. But I would like us to get more creative, rather than see our options limited to these only. As I understand it, there is evidence showing that certain smoking cessation programs are the way to go. So we should be creatively encouraging these. Many people smoke because their lives are significantly constrained. And many of those constraints are linked to injustice in the wider economy, as well as to tobacco-related policies that are more counterproductive from the point of view of public health than hiring smokers would be. I don't see the case for making constrained smokers bear the brunt of further efforts to prevent smoking in the future. I hope there are gentler, more respectful ways to pursue that goal. I think there are.

[Brad F]

Truth be told, I set myself up for your absolutely correct response.

I was actually thinking of this when I wrote my post:
http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/what_we_do/state_local/tobacco_settlement/

This is emblematic of "status quo" unfortunately, and my intent, while harming a few, was to send a greater economic message.

Living just south of Harlem, believe me, the Newport ads and permissiveness of this habit are front and center. I want the gentler interventions, believe me, but the political will is absent. Even in my own state, time and time again, the deciders fall short.

My response was visceral and rational. Maybe not the best combo.

Brad