Ok, you have outed yourself as a true blue liberal.
Let me tell you what Liberty is. LIBERTY is the right to do as you please without having your pursuit of happiness controlled by the government. You have every right to smoke cigarettes until you die a slow and painful death by emphysema like my mother did. And I should should have the right to hire you or not hire you for my business based on any criteria I choose including whether you are ugly or fat or bald or short or any insidious reason I choose and if you don't like it, then or you smoke or you are ugly or bald, then you can choose not to work for me or you can go to work for someone else or start your own business and hire only ugly, bald, fat smokers.
The slippery slope you seem to be concerned about works the other way. The GOVERNMENT has for decades been taking away the rights of employers and landlords to hire who they want and rent to who they want. They are even prohibiting businesses from exercising their religious consciences and forcing them to pay for insurance for abortion or requiring that they provide photography or food at gay weddings.
A private employer should have every right to pick and choose their employees and customers based on any stupid criteria that they choose. They don't owe you a job and if they think that smoking is a sin, then they should have the right to tell you to take a hike (until your lungs turn to cement and you drown in your own mucous cause you can no longer cough it out).
Welcome to Free Republic, you dedicated liberal.
IBTZ
When everyone in a workplace has their health costs pooled, peer pressure alone will de-select people with unhealthy behaviors. Let’s skip all the arguments about whether or not pooling costs is smart, or moral, or whether you like it or not; conservatives like to think of themselves as starting with people as they are in reality, not as they are in a dream. So, if you and I have our health costs pooled BY WHATEVER MEANS, such that your behavior affects my costs, then you can betcha I don’t want to pay for your diseases caused by smoking. (Skip all the arguments that smoking is healthy. Nobody is listening.)
Yes, the same logic runs the other way - so you have an interest in whether i eat cheeseburgers. But, conservatives, take note: we start with reality as it is, not with a dream...smoking is simply that behavior with the lowest benefit to cost ratio. So, any argument that equates smoking with eating bad food is an abstract logic exercise that is simply not going to work on many real people.
Back to the real world point: it is beyond debate at this point that health costs are going to be pooled in workplaces. So it is beyond debate at this point that smokers will be discriminated against. You can make all the liberty arguments you want; nobody cares. As the number of smokers drops, and they become more outnumbered, the non-smokers will simply insulate themselves from real and perceived costs of a stupid behavior. By force, if necessary.
I’m not making moral arguments here. I’m simply stating that this is how people will behave.
So: “what should I do?” If you want to use smoking as the fulcrum to fight battles, enjoy yourself. You will lose. If you want to get better jobs, quit smoking, or learn to lie. if lying is unacceptable, then quit smoking.
(By the way, for all you philosophers who rave about liberty then call private employers fascist for discriminating against you - there’s no hope for you. Give up the internet.)
I manage a business with 250 employees and a 40 million dollar budget. Our self-insured health plan is our single most difficult expense item to budget and control. 250 families depend on this plan for their coverage. You can bet that we discriminate against smokers financially every way we can, and will more in the future, and sleep well at night for doing it. (We will also discriminate against cheeseburgers, but that’s a little more complicated. We’ll get there.)
Okay, I guess since you disagree with me, that I’m a liberal now. /s
I don’t disagree with you, but employers should have no concern about what people do when they are not working. Unless it is affecting their job performance(ALCOHOL, DRUGS). Explain to me how smoking tobacco at home will affect my performance at work.
There were a ton of other LEGITIMATE things they could have denied me consideration for. But they chose to say that I WILL NOT BE HIRED because I smoke, after pointing out that I would not smoke at work, or come to work smelling like cigarettes.
You must also believe in following the law. Well here is the statute.
659A.315 Restricting use of tobacco in nonworking hours prohibited; exceptions. (1) It is an unlawful employment practice for any employer to require, as a condition of employment, that any employee or prospective employee refrain from using lawful tobacco products during nonworking hours, except when the restriction relates to a bona fide occupational requirement.
(2) Subsection (1) of this section does not apply if an applicable collective bargaining agreement prohibits off-duty use of tobacco products. [Formerly 659.380; 2005 c.199 §3]
So you tell me, is the employer BREAKING the law, by denying me(a prospective employee) from consideration from hiring because I SMOKE OFF WORK?