Is Big Brother creeping into your home and pulling the cigarette from your mouth?
It might seem like it with the recent anti-smoking policy enforcement of the Okemos-based Weyco Inc. The health care company fired four workers who refused to quit smoking.
First Amendment senses tingling yet? If they are, it's probably a false alarm.
We have to disagree with Sen. Virg Bernero, D-Lansing, who's introducing legislation against the anti-smoking decisions of companies such as Weyco.
What Weyco is doing is just good business sense. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention' Web site says more than 440,000 people die every year of a disease caused by smoking, or one out of every five deaths in the United States. If you're a health care company that knows cigarette smoking is the number one leading cause of preventable death in America, it's just a good idea to make insurance more expensive for smokers.
It also should be noted that there are "smoker's rights" laws to be found in 29 other states, which ban employers from firing smokers. No one is outlawing smoking, they are just saying you can't work at this particular company if you do. Go to Winston-Salem, N.C.
It might feel as though some right is being taken away from us because smoking has been a part of society for such a long time. Just as homosexuality is debated as a lifestyle choice, we assume smoking is the same way. But, unlike homosexuality, you have to remember that smoking is irrefutably a choice people make. The "I've been a smoker since such and such age" just won't cut it.
Businesses, which are suffering pretty bad in this state, are paying through the nose to provide employees with health insurance. The business has the right to choose if it wants to employ someone who is going to consistently rack up thousands of dollars on account of their decision to smoke. A CDC study done by an Atlanta-based branch found that the costs of smoking averaged about $3,400 per smoker, per year, with $1,760 coming from lost productivity and $1,623 in medical costs.
Also, it's not like the people fired from Weyco weren't given any slack. Employees were told about the new policy in late 2003. At the time, about 15 to 20 of the company's 200 employees were smokers. During a period of more than a year, Weyco offered aid to its employees to help them quit, and about a dozen did. Three left and four quit in late December before they could be fired for missing a smoking test. Those who stayed were just hanging around to be martyrs.
If you are following national coverage of this issue, you might see representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union poking their noses into the issue. Of course, they are upset about the fact that these people's "private lives" were invaded by not being allowed to cost their company thousands. Say the words "home" or "private" and the ACLU will undoubtedly come out with guns blazing. But this time, the ACLU's well-placed beliefs are not based on logic. The antagonist in this story isn't Big Brother; it's Winston Smith.
