Posted on 08/24/2013 4:26:29 PM PDT by EveningStar
Starting Jan. 1, Bert Fish Medical Center will no longer hire tobacco users, joining two other local hospitals in telling smokers not to apply.
Applicants will be tested for a nicotine byproduct and sign an agreement to remain tobacco-free during their employment with the New Smyrna Beach public hospital. The prohibition doesn't apply to volunteers, medical staff or Bert Fish's roughly 700 employees who were hired before the implementation date...
"Not all slopes are slippery but this one really is," said Lewis Maltby, president on the National Workrights Institute, a nonprofit offshoot of the American Civil Liberties Union based in Princeton, N.J. "The starting point for us is your boss doesn't have the right to tell you what to do in your own home. The hospital can tell you what to do during the week while you are at work, but your boss has no business telling you what you can and can't do while you are at home."
In 29 states, legislation prevents employers from discriminating based on a person's smoking during the hiring process, but Florida is not one of those states...
(Excerpt) Read more at news-journalonline.com ...
ping
This is pretty normal in healthcare now.
Everyone where I work has to pee in the bottle for nicotine tests.
If one tests positive? 2K added to your annual insurance.
Can you imagine the uproar if homosexuals need not apply?
Waiting to see this applied to pot smokers in Colorado, Seattle, etc.
Communism, totalitarianism, statism, has destroyed more lives than smokers could ever hope for. Any chance they will ban those things that liberals promote 24/7?
Just because some people willfully injure their own health through lifestyle choices, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t care for other peoples’ health.
Often, it’s the opposite.
Most health freaks I meet also tend to be self-obsessed narcissists. If the smokers smoke where it won’t affect others, I’m okay with it.
Next is diabetics.
Odious scum.
Has anyone looked at many of the nurses, doctors and others that work in a hospital? Smoking is the least of their problems.
Not to stir the pot (sic) or intentionally piss off smokers, but within our lifetimes this has gone from being “the” thing to do to being the thing NOT to do. What if the same kind of advertizing and public education campaign were applied to other drugs?
What about e-cigs and the like. I have not smoked tobacco on almost a year.
Most hospitals are run by thieving, left-wing fascists. I’m not surprised.
What about fat people?
ridiculous
I guess you can’t ban any of the “isms” you listed with out becoming one of them.
“Can you imagine the uproar if homosexuals need not apply?”
My thought exactly. Homosexual behavior is at least as unhealthy as smoking (much more so, actually), so how does this employer or any other discriminate solely on the basis of a potential employee’s vice?
Hey.... I take exception to that remark.... ;)
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