My employer happens to be on a health and environment kick. This week, the company announced that all facilities will become smoke-free over the course of the next 12 months. Kind of a big deal when you consider that we have more than 320,000 employees spread across 160 countries. Smoking was already prohibited inside buildings, so I didn’t really consider this all that revolutionary. Although it will be nice to walk to my car without having to go through the occasional cloud of smoke from the folks who prefer to smoke in the parking garage than go outside.
Apparently I misjudged my colleagues.
I have never seen the kind of reaction to any announcement that I’ve seen to the smoking ban. People are ranting about big brother, socialism, and 1984. The themes that seem to tie the ranting together are discrimination and the infringement of personal liberties, with a passing nod to Constitutional rights. One of my favorites was the guy who quoted Ben Franklin: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Now I don’t ususally like it when anyone claims to know the thoughts and intentions of those who lived centuries before us. More often than not, we tend to assume that the people we like and admire have intentions pretty close to our own, and that people we dislike have mothing but nefarious purposes. But I’m going to make an exception for myself. I’m going out on the limb to say that when the founders of this nation were crafting the documents we now hold (near) sacred, they were not thinking about the 21st century office worker’s right to smoke wherever they felt like it. I have a hard time equating a cigarrette during working hours on private property with essential liberty.
Am I missing something? Am I blindly allowing The Man to chip away at liberty, ignorant of the fact that the next thing to go will be something important to me? Or, as I suspect, will we be able to look back on this from some not-too-distant future, and realize that smoking has very little to do with liberty?
5 comments:
You know I don't like smoking, and am allergic, but I still take issue with bans of smoking. Now, your company is a private company, and can do whatever they wish on their grounds. But it bugs me when states and the feds make laws against smoking, while taxing smokers to the hilt. In some ways, that seems like persecution for a bad habit, and legislation of morality.
The way I see it, smoking is still legal. If they want to make it illegal, then that would be simpler than the gradual laws they're putting in place. But the government doesn't want to give up the cash cow that pays for (in my state) health care for the uninsured, kids anti-smoking programs, and other social programs. Personally, I think you'd be crazy to smoke, but people are addicted, and it is still legal.
Another point: the big issue is secondhand smoke and its annoyances and diseases, and the secondary issue is primary smoke causing cancer. OK - so stop people from smoking in public places or in cars with minors (both laws passed in my state in the past year or so). But when the gov't decides that I should not eat trans fat because it causes heart disease, or mandates that I should walk for 30 minutes a day to be in better health, is that crossing a line? Maybe someone has decided that I'm aesthetically unpleasant to look at because I am overweight, or they had an uncomfortable bus ride next to me, so they are a victim of "secondhand fat". I don't know - I think legislation of any kind of common sense is foolish, because our legislators don't seem to have any. When are they going to force big companies to stop polluting, for the health of the nation? Why do big companies ban smoking but not stop practices that would make people healthier? It's interesting to think about.
“Secondhand fat” has got to be the funniest thing I’ve heard in days! I have no idea how to work that into a conversation, but I’m going to try.
I actually think I’d be a lot more sympathetic to the folks who are claiming this is an infringement of civil liberties if they weren’t so prone to hyperbole. And when anyone starts throwing around words like “segregation” and “discrimination” for a behavioral choice, it chaps my hide. Several people have also made claims that there’s no real evidence that smoking or second-hand smoke causes any harm to anyone.
Our employer already forbids alcohol, firearms, and pornography on site, and no one seems to think that is a slap in the face to our founding fathers. Just like smoking, all of those things are legal. So why is the reaction so different? I’ve started to wonder if I really don’t get it because I don’t smoke, but the more these folks rant and whine, the more they just annoy me.
And one final note, the company is also working on several other items to improve workplace health: subsidizing gyms, offering better choices in vending machines, and subsidizing healthy foods in the cafeterias.
Just realized that my comment made me sound like a company apologist / tool. Which I normally wouldn’t be. Perhaps that’s what I should be pondering.
Ha! I don't think you're a tool! It's tough when you can see both sides of the issue. Your company has to pay for health insurance (part or all) for its employees. You want to make sure you're getting the best benefits you can as an employee. It's in the company's best interest to make things healthier, and in your best interest to have lower premiums. Since they are a private company, they can take the Mt. Dew and Twinkies out of the snack machines, install exercise equipment, and ban smoking on their grounds.
Now, if one wanted to bring in a Mt. Dew and a Twinkie from home for lunch, could they confiscate it from the lunchbox? I think that would be crossing a moral and personal line. I think that the law wouldn't prevent them from doing so, as a private company. Would that change narrow the applicant pool? Possibly. The difference between Twinkies and cigarettes is that the Twinkie only hurts the imbiber (and really not much if it's part of a balanced diet and a rare treat; the everyday Twinkie habit is a different story). If someone invented a cigarette that has no secondhand smoke, I don't see why smokers couldn't imbibe in those. Will chewing tobacco be allowed (hopefully not indoors, ick!)?
If the company decided that BMI were a salary-deciding tool, that would be discrimination, just as it would be if smokers made less money or received fewer benefits. Private people and companies can do as they choose on their property, but there are laws regarding employee treatment. As I said, I think that when the government gets involved with legislating morality that things start potentially being discriminatory, and the potential for smoking becoming the first legislatively banned bad habit becomes dangerous.
People just like to whine and hear themselves complain; of course the hyperbole is a natural extension. I think you have a great argument - I can't bring a gun in to work or watch porn or booze it up at work, either, but if I wanted to, I could go outside and light up. Or I could go out and walk through the cloud of "safe" secondhand smoke. Arguing that "secondhand smoke doesn't cause health problems" is bologna. I can tell you that it triggers asthma attacks, for a fact. Cancer, well, maybe the jury is out, but inhaling it isn't good for anybody.
Have fun with this issue - at least people will quiet down about it as the year passes - and you'll get the benefits - not breathing in the junk. Maybe some folks will quit, too; I can understand having bad habits, but one that costs $5 a day seems crazy.
I'm sort of late to the conversation, but my only comment is that my workplace is where people come in the last hopes of prolonging life when smoking has shortened it. The irony is rich when they walk through my co-workers smoke breaks to get there.
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