[I really cannot see purchasing the products of a company that discriminates against me, can you? All smokers should boycott products made by this company, and let them know why.]


"Your smokes or your job"

In less than a year, Scotts Miracle-Gro plans to start firing employees who light up — even at home

Friday, December 09, 2005
Monique Curet and Ken Stammen

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

"Beginning in October, smoking will be significantly more expensive for employees of Scotts Miracle-Gro Co.

Lighting up, even at home, will cost them their jobs.

Many other companies also are focusing on smokers, whether by raising their healthinsurance premiums or not hiring them.

Scotts took dramatic action because it wants to hold down health-insurance costs by "helping people live healthy lifestyles," said James Hagedorn, chairman and chief executive.

The Marysville company pays for medical claims using its own funds, "so why would we admit someone into this environment when they’re passing risk along to everyone else?" he asked.

"Our view is we shouldn’t and we won’t."

With operations across the country, Scotts can fire smokers legally in 21 states, including Ohio, company officials said.

Scotts appears to be one of only a few companies that will fire employees if they light up.

The Society for Human Resource Management found in a 2004 survey that 4.4 percent of those polled preferred to not hire smokers. Less than 1 percent of the 270 professionals surveyed said their companies have a formal policy against hiring smokers.

Weyco Inc., a Michigan company, began firing smokers earlier this year and received widespread attention.

Scotts has given employees a year — and free counseling, nicotine patches and cessation classes — to quit smoking. The company has not determined how it will verify compliance with the new policy, said Jim King, a spokesman.

The president and chief operating officer of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Lynn J. Beasley, sits on Scotts’ board of directors. Beasley, whose term on the board expires in January, declined comment.

The no-smoking mandate is part of a broader effort at Scotts to control health-care costs. The company also opened a $5 million fitness and medical facility for employees.

Some smokers, already frustrated by bans in the workplace, restaurants and bars, are saying enough is enough.

"It’s discrimination," said Terry Rieser, of Pickerington, taking a frigid smoke break outside a state office building Downtown this week. "Look at what people are putting into their bodies by way of their diet. I know people who didn’t smoke who keeled over with heart attacks. You can’t tie all the death rates to smoking."

Others are more philosophical.

"I can understand their situation, coming at it as a business," said a co-worker of Rieser’s, who wouldn’t give her name. "It does bring a higher risk of some conditions. I guess it comes down to your choice. If you want to keep smoking, you’ll pay higher rates."

Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, spoke out against Weyco’s policy and said this week that he also disagrees with the new Scotts policy. His New Jersey not-for-profit organization is focused on expanding human rights in the workplace.

"What you do in your own home on your own time is none of your boss’ business," Maltby said.

People who smoke do incur higher medical costs, Maltby said, but employers can protect themselves in other ways, such as charging smokers more to participate in company-sponsored medical plans.

An increasing number of companies are doing that.

In central Ohio, Cardinal Health, Children’s Hospital, Gannett, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Longaberger Company are among those charging higher health-insurance premiums to smokers.

Chase, one of the region’s largest employers with 13,700 workers, also charges smokers higher rates for supplemental life and long-term disability insurance.

To avoid the higher charges, an employee must not have smoked any cigarettes, cigars or pipes in the 12 months prior to Jan. 1 or must complete an approved stop-smoking class, spokesman Jeff Lyttle said.

The extra charge applies even if the employee doesn’t smoke but a dependent covered under the employee’s health insurance does.

Bank One charged smokers more before it was acquired by Chase in July 2004. The policy was implemented companywide this year.

"It really speaks to how big the issue of rising health insurance has become," Lyttle said.

Cardinal Health began discounting its health premiums for nonsmoking employees up to 15 percent in July 2002.

"People with less-healthy habits have higher absence rates, they’re out of the office more and have higher healthcare costs," spokesman Jim Mazzola said.

Publisher Gannett Co., which owns The Advocate in Newark, the Chillicothe Gazette and the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, will begin charging smokers $50 extra per month in 2006.

But the company is giving smokers an out: The fee can be waived if the employee completes a stop-smoking class, which Gannett pays for, spokeswoman Tara Connell said.

As for how an employer will know if the worker is a smoker or not, most companies say it’s an honor system.

"We’re not in the business of policing our employees, but we expect them to be honest with us," Connell said. "If they’re not, they’re subject to discipline up to and including termination."

William Hayes, president of the Health Policy Institute of Ohio, said employers are clamping down on smokers because unhealthy workers cost them more.

The institute, located in Columbus, is an independent, nonpartisan, health-care research group.

The National Business Group on Health estimates that each smoker costs employers $3,856 a year in added health-care costs and lost productivity.

Some wonder whether employers will take aim at other health factors, such as obesity.

"The question becomes how much more exacting will companies become on out-of-workplace behavior in an effort to lower their total health premium," Hayes said.

Gregg Lehman, chief executive of Gordian Health Solutions, a Tennessee company that administers wellness programs for employers, said his firm advises clients to use a carrot, rather than a stick, in dealing with smokers.

That includes creating voluntary programs that address unhealthy habits and discounting premiums for people who participate.

The stick approach creates an adversarial environment in the workplace, Lehman said.

"People that smoke, that tends to be a habit that developed over a number of years," he said. "The person didn’t get into it overnight, and you’re not going to fix it overnight either."

Columbus Dispatch

I posted on smokersclub forum about trying to set up a list of all things/places/items/stocks/businesses/
politicians,hospitals/manufacturers/places/
countries/cities/states/ etc.. we should all boycott. and if there already is a site to go to-point me there!
Still trying to figure out how to "boycott" those "pesky" cig taxes....
anyway-smokers version of the Boston Tea Party?
Hitting antis in the wallet.

I added that to a yahoo smokers rights group asking for boycott info as well.

An easy way around this, for companies with health insurance programs, would be to allow employees to bail out of the programs and take the money. In the long run statistics will prove that these efforts will backfire on employers. Many of the best, most creative employees smoke. The companies will start having problems recruiting the best talent and will start outsourcing in India and other places in order to create new products as has happened with the computer industry in California.

It seems strange to me that a company in the chemicle industry can consider smoking a hazard.

I've seen these lists before, but have lost track of where they were and who maintained them. Since we have so many of these type of threads popping up throughout the forums with companies such as Lowe's, Westin, and now Scotts implementing discriminating policies against smokers, there appears to be a need for a new forum to collect items for this specific topic.

So here you go. Please post like items in this new forum.

Of course the biggest company we should be boycotting or writing to express our concern to is Philip Morris. No one is more anti-smoker in their policies than them.

great idea

was the weyco thread going to be moved here as well or do we need a new one? :-|

You won't hear this from too many people within the tobacco control movement, but my honest opinion is that tobacco control groups have a responsibility to speak out against this troubling trend because in some ways, it is the stigmatization of smokers caused by anti-smoking programs that I think has contributed toward this trend.

I am highlighting this and other similar stories from this thread in a forum that a large number of anti-smoking groups and advocates will see in the hopes that they will start speaking up against this workplace discrimination and invasion of privacy.

First of all I say this in jest, but there is an easy way (well, not real easy) to get companies to stop discriminating against smokers: Increase smoking rates!

That's right, there's strength in numbers. You wouldn't be reading these stories if the smoking rate was 50%.

It's time for Big Tobacco to take a hit in the wallet and start selling cigarettes for nothing.

It's time for smokers to buy an extra pack a week and whip them over schoolyard fences or leaving them in college bars.

It's time for rich anti-discrimatory people to start taking out ads advocating smoking.

Patrol our southern border and only allow smoking illegals in.

Maybe we should start writing doom and gloom letters to newspapers on how the earth has only two decades left before it disintegrates. Who's going to worry about their health later in life when they think there won't be any life then anyway?

Me? Maybe I'll have one of my cars painted like the Marlboro Formula 1 race cars.

Increase smoking rates. Then see what they do.

quote:

Originally posted by oldstudent:
I posted on smokersclub forum about trying to set up a list of all things/places/items/stocks/businesses/
politicians,hospitals/manufacturers/places/
countries/cities/states/ etc.. we should all boycott. and if there already is a site to go to-point me there!...

Great idea, hope it catches on. We need some smokers-central which keeps track of politicians (from local to federal) and companies. The 20% of adults ought to figure in anyones calculations.

quote:

Still trying to figure out how to "boycott" those "pesky" cig taxes....

Just make your own at $8-12 per carton, great saving and much better tobaccos than the mass market reconstituted and 'expanded' pseudo-tobacco.

That not only hits the professional antismokers, bureacrats and other parasites in the wallet, but it also takes revenge at the treacherous big tobacco backstabbers who made the deals with the states to rip us off for hundreds of billions (for a market monopoly and state protection of their joint racket). I switched for that last reason alone, they pissed me off that much. Now I enjoy much better smoke than before (American Spirit, non-filtered) and save quite a bit.

You can find out about MYO/SYO at these couple sites:

SYO users helping users
RYO Magazine

You just get a machine (from few bucks to $30-40), tobacco (a pound makes 2-3 cartons and costs $8-$30) and tubes ($2-$3 per carton of tubes) and you're in business. The machine pays for itself on the first carton. I use mostly Top-o-Matic unit ($32), also have several others, including Suprematic Premier ($42). It takes only about 5-7 minutes per pack (of peaceful, relaxing activity every evening).

At the rate we are going a list of people, organizations, and companies to boycott would become a national directory in a matter of weeks.

What we need is a list of people, organizations, and companies to support.

The public has been totally brainwashed, we need a health insurance program designed by, administered by, and supported by smokers. The fact that none exists only feeds the idea that smokers cost more to insure.

We need lists of smoker friendly states, counties, and towns where we can florish to disprove the notion we are a drag on the economy. Remember how the "Moonies" moved into towns and counties and took over? Maybe we should all trace out lineage back to native americans and move to the reservations, create busineses that that create value both for ourselves and the nation. Isn't this type of persecution that brought most of our ancestors to this country in the first place?

Only our success in business will convince the world that smokers have value. As non-smokers continue to peddle services to each other and realise that they are living a dream created by financial institutions that can be shattered overnight by stupid legislative proposals will they come to think for themselves, as we should be doing now.

We all consume goods and services each day, do we ever consider how much we are giving to those who oppose our existance. The most obvious would be to manufacture our own tobacco products, not at home but in a friendly state, county, and town.

We need to create our own form of barter, our own transportation system to distribute goods and services amongst ourselves.

I feel that amongst the committed smokers of today we have the talent to create what we need, where we want to, and let the non-smoking world exist at their own expense, not ours anymore.

Forget about who not to support, the "GOLD LIST" is who to support.

Buy an extra pack and throw it over the schoolyard fence
-------------------------------------------

Damn it, Squeezer, that's yet ANOTHER time I've had to clean coffee off my keyboard because of you LOL :-D

Read this, and all shall become clear. Also (if you read carefully ) start becoming very afraid.



Scotts CEO Joins CDC Foundation Board of Directors

May 31, 2005, ATLANTA -- James Hagedorn, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of The Scotts Company, the world's leading supplier of consumer products for lawn and garden care, has been elected to the board of directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Foundation. He will serve a five-year term on the board.

Hagedorn joined Scotts in 1995 as senior vice president of the Consumer Gardens Group when the company merged with Stern's Miracle-Gro Products, Inc. At Miracle-Gro, he served as executive vice president. In 1996, Hagedorn became executive vice president, U.S. Business Groups and was elected president of Scotts North America in 1998.

Hagedorn is a graduate of The Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program and holds a degree in aeronautical science from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. He served in the U.S. Air Force for seven years as a captain and an F-16 fighter pilot. Hagedorn currently serves as an associate trustee of the North Shore Hospital in Manhasset, NY, and chairman of the board of Farms for City Kids Foundation, Inc., in Reading, VT. He is also on the boards of Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and The Intrepid Museum.

"Jim Hagedorn's experience leading a highly successful business enterprise will be a great asset to the CDC Foundation as we enhance our efforts to build effective partnerships between CDC and the private sector," says Charles Stokes, CDC Foundation president and CEO. "His business acumen and his passion for public health will be extremely valuable as we begin strategic planning to set the course for the Foundation's second decade of operation."

Nice find, Dave.

Hagedorn should know that his Scotts Co products are a serious menace to the environment themselves. All those lawn products from suburban sprawl running into the waterways is causing algae blooms and dead zones, choking off the marine and fresh water life. It's killing the Chesapeake Bay.

I'm happy to say my lawn will be amply fertilized from now on with nothing more than grass clippings and mulched leaves.

Here is email I sent to Jack Roush racing, Darrell Waltrip, Jeff Hammond, Fox Nascar sports, Wall Street Journal, fox money, CNBC money, Geraldo and others-with additional info regarding not only the companies, but their stocks and their subsidiaries (sp?). NASCAR has their sponsor sites along with the info-5 citizen fans are particpating in a Pharma stop smoking (announced in 05 at some not publicised track) campaign-long time smokers using patch, gum etc...pharma only of course...winner of this wins a Richard Petty Enterprise racing experience. Rats in the lab!!!!!!!!!!
anyway-I am digging and will collect names and companies. Scotts affiliates include some biggies. will post as I have time to collect. Seems there are mainly a lot of big companies with their hands in the cookie jar everywhere. What a surprise!

Anyone remember what companies/Ivory Towers got the most of Howard Hughes money back in the day?
(of which that legacy continues on self-fufilling even today?)

To Jack Roush Racing:
"I am sorry to say I will not be supporting any of your sponsors that discriminate against smokers/tobacco users. That would include not supporting your teams-which is very heartbreaking to me. I enjoyed the Roush experience-love all the drivers, and thoroughly are and were behind Jack in all his trials and tribulations over these past few years (and coming years with the NASCAR implementation of no teams over 4...free enterprise is not encouraged by NASCAR I guess).
I have a big decision to make this year-whether to attend the Brickyard and nite Bristol races in '06. It will be my boycott of all things I am finding out about NASCAR and how they are "legislating the behavior of the last free sport where you could be yourself", and I include fans and drivers and owners in this list.
What this has become to my husband and myself is that NASCAR no longers wants us as fans-our dollars-our chance to pass along to our grandchildren the love of what stock racing used to be. It does not resemble what drew us to the sport in the first place. Real people, working hard and playing hard and living life!!!
Please understand this is nothing personal-it is our only way of protest to such a large part of our lives (which was NASCAR and we no longer feel part of that "family".

Thank you for "listening",
Capri Lione
Madison, WI 53703

In considering the Brickyard also remember that the Indianapolis Smoking Ban becomes effecive 3/1/06 and I assume it will apply to the track as much as to the Restaurants and all other public spaces, excluding tobacco shops, Tobacco Bars (we have one), and bars that do not serve food.

A media blitz was started last week for the Final Four that is to take place in the early days of the ban.

Bruce!!!!thanks for that info! My husband has been to 32 straight Indy 500's. This will be the year to stop. We will be having discussions on that one I guarantee you!!!
no wonder our uncle moved to South Dakota and AZ in the winter (it was all the taxes in Indiana that finally convinced them to leave)-boy do I commiserate with you!
I will be emailing Indy 500 folks my protest and ensuing boycott-man they blew it w/ Formula One and now this.........

The last free sport was taken over by the government, the rabid smoker-haters, and the yuppies long ago. That's what NASCAR means when they say the need to 'braden support for the sport.' Get away from the old 'redneck' image, and cater to health-is-their-god yuppies.

Being from Indianapolis, as the elite have taken over auto racing attendance has fallen.

The Indianapolis 500 Miles race use to be a fun activity for the entire city during the month of May, it has been reduced to a couple of days at the end of May.

The track and it's evirons use to be a college destentation each weekend in May. It was a drunken brawl of people watching and free spirits. A place to get lost in the crowd. A place to see current celebrities in person.

It is now a scheduled event, to be enjoyed in designer clothing, drinking designer water. It has nothing to attract the younger generation, it is no longer attracting them. As the youth age they have other things to do and ignore the sport.

The elites are now trying to capitolize on what NASCAR has been because it has a youthful audience. As they take over, the fun associated with the sport will disappear the same way it has with whatever the 500 is associated with.

The money people will not be satisfied until auto racing will be attended like the scene in My Fair Lady where Eliza is taken for a day to Ascot.

To insure the same profits, management will just continue to excalate prices until the people who made the sport what it is will look upon the ticket price and affiliated costs as more than their budget will allow and stop attending. The races will continue until they no longer impress the people with the money to attend. When they get home and tell their friends they attended and no one cares or understands what they are talking about, the racers will return to city streets.

Racing no longer seems to be a competition among the engineers, but has become a video game where reality is a function of the belief of you at the wheel of a fast machine. The problem is a fast machine can't go anywhere anymore except a supervised track, winning is a corporate image. There is no room for the individual who tinkers with his own machine to make it better. It is just PR, whoever has the biggest budget and can keep their name before the public.

I wasn't paying attention when the Winston Cup became the Nextel Cup (or whatever it is now).

What kind of smoker backlash happened then? Why did you save the hard feelings till now, Bruce/Oldstudent?