Some employers are resorting to urine tests to screen out smokers from jobs:
Some enforce the policy by requiring a urine sample from prospective employees. If the urine cotinine level exceeds the threshold that indicates active smoking, then the applicant is automatically rejected for the position, regardless of his or her qualifications for employment. Several of these employers go so far as to fire existing smokers if they are unable to or uninterested in quitting within a given time period.
This doctor goes further and suggests screening out those who have been exposed to second-hand smoke.
Related posts:
- Should smokers be refused surgery?
- Should tobacco companies pay for smokers’ CT scans to screen for lung cancer?
- Smokers are denied surgery in the UK
- Smokers in denial
- Save money, stop hiring smokers
- A genetic test to identify smokers who will develop lung cancer
- Cleveland Clinic bans hiring of smokers
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{ 7 comments }
I’m no fan of smoking, but I gotta draw the line here.
For employment, what constitutes ‘qualifications’ for a job should be reasonalby evidence based. If off the job smoking, a legal and governmentally regulated activity, somehow alters job performance for the worse, then let’s see the evidence. If it merely increases health care costs to the employer then that is a separate matter. For the cost matter if smoking is cost prohibitive, will the employer also ban any other activity that harbours similar risks. Such a list must exist, or else they are just guessing that smoking is the most significant single risk factor. And just guessing is arbitrary and therefor wrong.
Kevin-
Thanks for picking up on this. Just to make it clear to your readers, I am being sarcastic in my post. I tend to agree with gasman. While I think employers would do well to provide smoking cessation and other health promotion programs for their workforces, I think that refusing to hire people based on a lawful behavior that does not directly impact upon job performance is not appropriate, and it represents an undue invasion of employee privacy.
I was hoping that the sarcasm of my post would make it clear that the same reasoning that is being used to support policies to deny employment to smokers could equally well be used to deny employment to people who are merely exposed to secondhand smoke. And gasman is right. The same reasoning could be used to deny employment to people who are fat, don’t get enough exercise, or eat an unhealthy diet.
According to these statistics, I have already killed both my husband (through my 2nd hand smoke) and myself (through my own smoke) so the fact that at this moment I have went 31 incredibly long hours without a cigarette seems like huge waste of effort and pain to me.
Is it too late?
It’s not the smoke, it’s the chlamydia? http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/full/13/10/1624
What if it turns out that sitting next to a smoker is like sitting next to a somebody with actvie TB?
Ever since I read about the association of chlamydia pnuemoniae with lung cancer and smoking, it has been giving me the creeps to sit next to a smoker who has a cough.
Is he coughing a bacteria that could cause lung cancer or heart disease in me, even tho I don’t smoke and eat my veggies?
Well, I don’t smoke. However, I am fat and that will eventually lead to increased costs to my health insurance provider — or so I’ve been told. I have been fat all my life and so far so good (I am 42 and 100 lbs. overweight). However, I do want to say that I work with a woman who “steps out” for a cigarette five or six times a day. Sometimes she is only gone for ten minutes, but usually it is 20-30 minutes. All this in an 8-hour workday. Once, she was gone for almost two hours! Her behavior has made me decide that should I ever be the one making a final decision on hiring someone, I will cross folks who smell of smoke right off my list.
I’ll grant you that point about lowered productivity when people have to stop to feed their addiction. If only the employer could see this and document her absences. Thus far the Supreme Court has not yet found that smoking addiction is a proteced disability that requires us to accomodate folks getting their drug fix.
I THINK SMOKERS SHOULD NOT WORK IN HOSPITALS,CLINICS,AND ALL THE REALATED HEALTHY CARE PLACES,IS SAD TO BE IN THE HOSPITAL AND SEE A NURSE JUST TAKING MINUTES AND MINUTES OF SMOKING BREAKS A DAY,WHILE THE NON SMOKERS ARE WORKING NON STOPPING,AND AFTER THAT GO CLOSE TO A PATIENCE WITH ALL THAT SMELL.I SAW MANY PATIENCES COMPLAINING,IS HARD TO BE SICK,TO FEEL SICK,AND SOMEONE THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE THERE CLOSE TO YOU,IS SMELLING SO STRONG OF SMOKE.IF A SMOKER WANTS TO WORK PROPERLY SHOULD NOT SMOKE DURING WORK PERIOD,AND SHOULD NOT GET A JOB AS A NURSE,A DOCTOR,EVEN TOUGH THARE ARE MANY,THEY SHOULD NOT SMOKE AT ALL THAN DURING THE 8 HOURS WORK.
IF SOMEONE IS AN ADDICTIVE SHOULD, THE LEAST ,TAKE REPONSIBILY FOR THEIR OWN ACTIONS AND RESPECT OTHERS…
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