I have to share this "editorial" with you. Don't know how to link to it - but if you go to 'columbusdispatch.com', you should be able to find this letter by Micah Berman, the 31 year old attorney who head the Tobacco Public Policy Center at Capital University Law School. Guy's from Stanford. His premise is that hiring only smokers is not only legal (true, for now, in Ohio) but really beneficial - for the company and the smoker. He says smokers cost companies $$$ in health care and lost productivity. And the policy he endorses would not make smokers unemployable - it just asks smokers to quit - which is what "vast majority" want to do anyway. So an employer who adopts such a policy is really doing smokers a great favor. What a load of cr**. But you wait for it: the pressure on companies to adopt such policies is coming. I've worked in large companies for decades. The people who use the most health services - and take the most time off - are parents. Should we encourage employers to refuse to hire people with small children? All that lost productivity for the sick days, the doctor's appointments, the sports and school events. That's never going to happen. Public policy and all that. And it shouldn't happen. There is a right to privacy in how one choses to live one's life - whether it's a decision to use a legal product or to have children. But we still need to pass a law in Ohio if we want to protect the smoker's right to privacy.

Link to the call to ban smokers from employment. Why would a newspaper print that crap?

This is to be expected from the agenda driven rat-media.

The columbus dogpatch, and especially the toledo blade are rabid smoker-hater publications.

These kinds of lies and propaganda are no different than the methods of hitler. Demonize a group of people, take their humanity from them, it's the means to an end for these kind of totalitarians.

I have long since quit subscribing to any kind of newspaper. I also have stopped watching news on TV, as it is all distorted propaganda.

Thinking people will find the truth. Sheep will accept what they are fed.

What else can you expect from a state employee looking to make points and tenure.

It is pretty bad when a medical facility is the largest employer anywhere.

Unlike this person, I spent my best years of working with an ashtray on my desk - no smoking or coffee breaks. I worked from 7:30 AM until 10 PM five days a week and from 7:30 AM to 12 noon on saturday. I never took a sick day. I took two vacations. I was NOT alone in the corporate headquarters of the company I worked for. Few of us ever got sick, there was too much to do.

If employees are causing employers problems today they are mostly on automated payroll systems. Health insurance is also automated. Where are the reports reflecting these losses?

There is no need to estimate something that can be varified by specific reports with employee names and departments.

Only an someone without knowledge of current systems could make such a generalization and get away with it.

If there are reports to illustrate these claims - where are they?

You've got that right, Bruce. We all used to work that hard. I can remember working for a large company which decided to go smoke-free in 1988.

To try and transition gently, at first they actually said the smokers could go outside for a smoke break whenever they wanted, literally.

Within 30 minutes of the first day of this, most of the BEST people in the company were outside. I looked around me and felt proud to be in their company.

These were the people from all the departments in the company everyone respected, went to when they had a problem noone else could solve, who could be counted on to get the job done, and done right.

I remember trying to come up with who were the good people in the company out of the nonsmokers still inside. I came up with a few names, but a small percentage of the total.

Whereas out of the smokers, it was clear that day, ALL were among the best people.

Funny how it was just at the turn of the 1990's when companies started going from 35-hour/9-5 workweeks to 40-hours/8-5. I reflect if this was to make up for no longer getting three people out of every one smoker, who now no longer gave a sh*t, just did the job and went home ASAP like everybody else.

I'd like to see too, the statistics on exactly how much money smokers ARE spending on health care these days, given that so many of us avoid doctors like the plague.

Meanwhile, its true as far as I keep seeing that many of the nons seem to be going to doctors for every little hangnail.

I was surprised to read that your company went "smoke-free" as far back as 1988. I never heard the term Secondhand Smoke until 1990. With the exception of hospitals, I didn't think smokers were treated like lepers until around 1993, after the EPA lies. And for the record, as a 32 year smoker, I've missed maybe 3 days of work since I was 18. (I'm 47).

Yes, Pat, that was in New York City where I lived at the time, and where by this time it was just starting to be 'trendy' for bigger companies to go this way. It was more about people just didn't like smoke, as well as a sort of wistful hope that this would help smokers to quit. Nobody had gotten mean about it yet. However, C Everett Koop was the SG (Reagan's choice) and the second-hand smoke rumors were just getting started. Although -- you are quite right -- this was not quite yet annointed as a serious argument until the 1993 EPA report. Also somewhere in the late 80's (not sure exact) as a result of then Mayor Ed Koch loosing ground on a very long run of popularity, the tactic of scapegoating smokers had it's first-round shot when he threw his support behind "smoking sections" in restaurants. At the time this was a very big deal. We smokers adjusted, concluded that fair was fair, and that is also when we made our first mistake.

My first encounter with a smoking ban was in 1979 in Pittsburgh. Smoking was bad for the computers.

I was staying at the home of the owner and once there I spotted an ash tray and proceeded to use it in their living room, I thought nothing of it.

The next day at work I was attacked by the owner's daughter for using her ash tray as it was intended, I just looked at her.

I guess it created quite a stir in the office that I would dare to smoke in the home of the owner. I had no remorse, the computers were at the office. Needless to say I spent furture trips to the home office in hotels.

I remember the good old days when even nonsmokers had ashtrays in their homes for guests who smoked and thought nothing of it. When I was first dating my wife back in the mid-80's, her family (all nonsmokers) had plenty of ashtrays. 1993 came along and they threw them all out.

Yes, that's right Pat. I am so tired of hearing this business about "respecting" other people's right to a smoke-free home.

Well, certainly you do if you have no other choice in the moment. But there is such a thing as a host's obligation to accomodate the needs of guests. How about insisting on serving prime rib to someone you know very well is a vegetarian?

How about not permitting people to use the bathroom? I've had guests who made yucky and did not clean up after themselves, which I had to do when they left. However, it would still be rude of me to prohibit even the offender from ever using my bathroom again, or to inform guests that they could only do number one, and NEATLY PLEASE.

In my view -- which will not change -- common courtesy dictates that you arrange for at least one place (if it has to be the basement or the laundry room) for your guests who smoke. Failure to provide is especially shameful if the smoker is an older Uncle Joe or Grandma Jane.

When the host has true good reasons for being unable to provide this, there is such as thing as putting his own coat and hat on, and saying "Come on Uncle Joe, I want to show you where we plan to put in a new pool, and say, let's have a cigarette too."

If it's a large gathering and their are at least a few smokers who can go out together, then in that case, the host could relinquish this responsibility without being rude, I think.

Well, I hate to sound like Latitia Baldridge, but it bugs me the way people think rudeness to smokers is excusable. The last time I quit -- which was well after 1993 -- I sure did keep a few ashtrays in the cupboard.

quote:

Posted Sun July 15 2007 01:33 PM Hide Post
I remember the good old days when even nonsmokers had ashtrays in their homes for guests who smoked and thought nothing of it. When I was first dating my wife back in the mid-80's, her family (all nonsmokers) had plenty of ashtrays. 1993 came along and they threw them all out.

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The Klinton bully pulpit influence was beginning to be felt.

I guess the question is: "How much of the air on this planet belongs to each of us?"

BTTT.

Some strange activity going on in the overpost. Just links without words. Probably just spam.

It amazes me to see all the people standing outside bars because of the ban-happy liberals. Imagine the impact on business, if they stayed home or got takeout. If I'm not welcome, I don't go. States and companies are telling people they can't smoke in certain areas outdoors, what a contradiction as pertains to 2nd hand smoke. Some counties will fine you if your pet is outside in inclement weather.
Where's the ACLU on private Property Rights?

Apparently, the ACLU is MIA! They don't like smokers, but they love every OTHER pervert on the planet.