Tobacco.org

EDITORIAL: Memorial's smoking stand 

Memorial Hospital's decision to stop hiring workers who smoke beginning February 1 can be broadly justified as a symbolic standard for a health-care provider. Yet its challenge to traditional standards of fair treatment for employees and job applicants is a bit more tricky. Ultimately it leads to question of whether employers should attempt to regulate the private, legal, off-premises, life-style behaviors of their employees, and, if so, where to draw the line. . . .

Yet other risky behaviors abound. Many people, for example, drink too much alcohol. Others ride motorcycles, which produce a high incidence of catastrophic brain injuries and exorbitant medical costs that is often shifted to the public. One could argue that rock-climbing, hang-gliding, sky-diving, and bicycle, ATV and horse-back riding are needlessly risky.

It is imminently fair to ban smoking and other tobacco use at work, and to charge differentiated health insurance premiums. But if it is fair to discriminate against smokers by barring them from jobs on the grounds of a commitment to health, why stop there. Or better yet, why begin down that slippery slope.

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