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Posted on 04/05/2004 8:16:18 AM PDT by SheLion

Smoked out

Some companies now forbid workers to smoke anywhere on their property -- not on the sidewalk, not even in their cars in the parking lot.

01:00 AM EST on Sunday, April 4, 2004

BY JENNIFER LEVITZ
Journal Staff Writer

Everyone knows you can't smoke in the office anymore.

But increasingly, you can't smoke outside work either.

At Rhode Island Hospital, employees have a nickname for their designated outdoor smoking kiosks: butt huts.

The workers, however, could consider themselves indulged that they're allowed to puff on the hospital's sprawling property at all.

Because a few miles away at Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse, in Cranston, employees who want a cigarette must punch out, get in their cars, and drive off store grounds. Workers who sneak a smoke in their cars in the Lowe's parking lot can be disciplined under a corporate policy that went into effect in September. Workers at Beacon Mutual Insurance Co., in Warwick, also aren't allowed to smoke in their cars in the parking lot, or it could lead to a note in their personnel file.

Molly Clark, director of environmental health programs at the American Lung Association of Rhode Island, says the smoke-ban trend is "regulating outdoors as well" as indoors.

Companies send smokers outside, she said, only to find them huddled by the front doors in a cloud of stale smoke.

But the outdoor restrictions aren't only about secondhand smoke and unwelcoming whiffs at the front door.

Some employers, believing that smokers drive up health-care costs, are unabashedly trying to get them to quit. Companies might run into legal problems if they refuse to hire smokers, but they can make it a hassle to be one.

When toymaker Hasbro Inc. created a designated outdoor smoking area last year, "we tried to make it as inconvenient as possible," said Robert Carniaux, senior vice president of human resources. "We were hoping that we might effect some change in behavior."

CHER SILVIA wishes people would stop minding her behavior.

That behavior has included dragging on Dorals for 24 years.

In December, Silvia started RI Rights, an online activism group for Rhode Island smokers, who don't want to see the state go the way of New York and other smoke-free places. Silvia, of Tiverton, is retired and lives in Lake Placid, Fla., but she comes north for the summer.

If Rhode Island starts enacting bans all over, she said last week in a friendly, husky voice, "I can't take it."

She said employers who tell workers they can't smoke in their cars -- or on the property -- have gone too far.

"They're nannies," she said. "They've got to tell us what's best for us. I don't appreciate it at all. I can live my own life the way I want to."

Such workplace bans are ahead of what is required by Rhode Island law. Rhode Island's smoking laws, which have lagged behind those in border states, don't ban smoking in workplaces.

But that may change.

On Thursday, the House leadership introduced legislation that would ban smoking in virtually every public place, including restaurants, shopping malls and private office buildings. The bill would also require that employers who allow their workers to smoke outside "must provide an area which is physically separated from the enclosed workplace so as to prevent the migration of smoke into the workplace."

The bill sponsored by House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox represents more than six months of negotiations and marks a reversal for the House, which last year allowed similar legislation passed by the Senate to die.

Rep. Elizabeth M. Dennigan, D-East Providence, has been a leader on the smoke-ban issue during her eight years in the House.

"We certainly have more support this year. I think a lot of that has to do with what has happened regionally since we adjourned last year," Dennigan said, referring to New York and the sweeping smoking laws that have passed in Connecticut. Legislation in Massachusetts has passed the House and Senate, and the governor has promised not to veto it.

REGARDLESS of what's happening at the General Assembly, a nonprofit agency called the Worksite Wellness Council of Rhode Island is working with Rhode Island companies to change smoking policies.

The council is an affiliate of the Worksite Wellness Council of America, a national organization started in 1982 by some workers in Omaha, Neb.

The original mission was to "enhance the health and well-being of employees," thereby helping companies save money and time, according to the national council's Web site. The Omaha council's success spurred "cost-conscious" employers in other communities to form their own councils. Rhode Island's Department of Health helped local companies start the wellness council here in 1999.

The Worksite Wellness Council of Rhode Island is now its own nonprofit organization with 150 members. Jeffrey Johnson, vice president of community relations at Beacon Mutual Insurance, is president.

He said the wellness council has used Health Department statistics to "find out what is killing" Rhode Islanders.

"We've tried to take the top five things and try to find grant money and go out and make a critical difference in the workplace," he said.

He said that if employers spend money and time on their workers' health, they can "reduce health-care costs, workers' comp costs," absenteeism -- and boost productivity.

For each of four years now, the local wellness council has received a $50,000 grant from the state's share of federal tobacco money. As part of the $246-billion tobacco settlement of 1998, tobacco companies make annual payments to states.

The wellness council uses the tobacco grant money to send Debra Foley, a consultant, to workplaces. Foley said it is her job to assist employers in achieving a smoke-free status.

Foley has worked with some 175 companies over the past four years.

The majority do have some restrictions on where smoking is allowed outside building, she said.

She knows of 8 or 10 companies that have entirely smoke-free premises. And more are considering it.

"In the last month I have had four companies referred to me that are interested in going to a smoke-free campus," she said.

Policies are the most effective way to encourage smokers to quit smoking, she said.

DR. RICHARD BROWN, director of addictions research at Butler Hospital and Brown University, found it interesting that some companies are enforcing policies as a way not only to keep the air cleaner, but to change habits.

"My personal reaction is that it's a little more controversial," he said.

People tend to not like to have behaviors dictated to them, he said.

He said those workplace smoking policies, however, could be positive if the strict rules are paired with education and support for the smokers. Hasbro, Beacon Mutual, Lowe's and other companies said they did phase in their smoking policies and have offered to help employees quit with smoking cessation-classes and health fairs. Hasbro even brought in a hypnotist.

Beacon Mutual started educating and warning its smokers long before the company moved 2 1/2 years ago from rented offices to its privately owned headquarters overlooking Route 95 in Warwick. As a tenant, it could not stop employees from puffing in the hallways; as owner of its headquarters, it could.

"We told them a year before we moved that there would be no smoking on the grounds," said Johnson, the vice president of community relations.

And that there would be no smoking in the parking lot.

Some employees said, but it's my car. The company told them that they were on private property. "A couple of people did get caught," Johnson said, but it never went beyond a verbal warning. However, future offenses could result in a written warning that would become part of their personnel file.

Once in the new building, the company also banned the informal practice of smoking breaks.

"The rest of the people were saying, 'How come smokers get a break and go outside and we don't?' " Johnson said.

"We said, 'You're absolutely right. That's not fair, because we're rewarding bad behavior.' That's when we said to supervisors, you've got to stay on top of it and make sure smokers are not allowed to take breaks."

MOST OF THE NEW hires come with the understanding that they will have to go until lunchtime without a cigarette. Johnson said Beacon is doing its employees a favor.

"We can't afford to do all these self-destructive behaviors, and people are finally waking up to that fact," he said.

Down in Florida, Cher Silvia, founder of RI Rights, has been collecting data on workplace smoking bans.

Along with running RI Rights, Silvia is a member of Illinois Smokers, Florida Smokers, Florida Rights, Maine Rights, the Smokers Club forum, and more.

"This morning, I opened up 100 e-mails," she said last week. "That's just in the morning. God knows what I get in the day."

One of the big topics for the Internet groups lately is Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse and its national policy that forbids employees to smoke anywhere on the premises, including in their own cars in the parking lot.

But Lowe's national spokeswoman, Chris Ahearn, said the new policy has worked very well.

She said there have been complaints but just as many comments from employees who like working in a smoke-free environment.

"We're not telling people to stop smoking," Ahearn said. "We're saying don't smoke on our property."

With staff reports by Scott Mayerowitz

DIGITAL EXTRA: To smoke -- in public -- or not to smoke? Cast your vote on the topic at:

http://projo.com/news/smokingpoll.htm

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