Right on! 
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
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
Ask yourself, why is it any of my business how an adult lives his life?
Then ask yourself, why did I forget that "society" is made up of individuals, some of whom are not clones of me?
Then ask yourself, just because socialism has insinuated itself into the health care system, why did I have to start thinking like a socialist?
Then ask yourself, "How did I get this stupid?"
Oh! LOL! Someone sent me a link to the : Nicotine Drug Test Solutions
For $59.99, you can buy a nicotine washing solution that guarantees that the nicotine will be out of your bloodstream in three days. Isn't that a crock?
It does not. There is no pack that makes that statement!
Is that GOD? Only GOD knows the time and cause of our deaths. And when it's our time, it won't matter one hoot if we smoked or not.
Oh that's for sure. We are growing a Country of wimps on Ritalin and Prozac!
You know, you take everything for face value, as long as you agree with it. For instance, you stated "Some people who told me........." do you believe everything you are told? And people usually can't stop something because they enjoy it too much. Believe me, if I hated smoking, I sure wouldn't smoke.
What about the coal miners who died from Black Lung? Not all of THEM smoked! Yet they still developed lung cancer and most died. You can't blame all lung cancers on cigarettes.
I wouldn't be so quick to bite off the hands that feed you.
I have no idea what that means in this context.
Then I will tell you: lawmakers raise taxes on cigarettes constantly to "balance the state's budgets." You think this is ok, because heh! You don't smoke. The money isn't coming out of YOUR wallet. But.......if all smokers stopped smoking or went elsewhere for cigarettes and then the Tobacco Settlement Money stopped coming into the state, where do you think the lawmakers will go to make up for the loss of cigarette tax revenue? They have to hit you up in there somewhere. And don't think they won't.
LOL! Probably more then ever. hehe!
BINGO!!!!!!!!!
I could give a rat's butt about the cost of health care. My argument on this thread has always been twofold.
1. Lowe's can ban whatever activity on their property that they wish. Doing so does not make them some sort of oppressive regime.
2. There is absolutely, positively nothing redemptive about smoking. It is unlikely that one smoker in this country does not know that smoking diminishes your quality and quantity of life, that it makes you old and ugly before your time and it makes you smell disgusting. If, knowing that, you still choose to smoke you are the opposite of smart. Which would make you...?
When did you come over to my side? You just keep making my point for me.
Thank you so much for not believing all the anti-smoking spin and lies they are trying to pound into the general public. Of course smoking isn't for everyone! And sure, some non-smokers think it stinks. But that doesn't make it illegal and it doesn't make it right to lump smokers in with all the garbage of the world.
Right on!
Smokers in the U.S. still outnumber the NRA and the AARP! There is another large group as well, but I forget who they are. But there are a lot of smokers in this Country.
ROTFLMAO!
This is your opinion, stated as fact. One remarkably positive quality is that it acts as a dweeb repellent.
It is unlikely that one smoker in this country does not know that smoking diminishes your quality and quantity of life that it makes you old and ugly before your time and it makes you smell disgusting.
Opinion, presented as fact.
If, knowing that, you still choose to smoke you are the opposite of smart.
No, I think that would make me an adult who chooses to live her life as she sees fit. The concept is obviously way too big for you to wrap your mind around. Life must be very painful for you.
Which would make you...?
Not you, praise the Lord!
~whew
I took 45 minutes off, and I am just now catching up. I was hoping you all didn't leave before I got back.
I try to keep everything at the "ready." haha!
It does not. There is no pack that makes that statement!
Here, just to indulge you, is a list of warnings that DO appear on packs of cigarettes:
CAUTION: CIGARETTE SMOKING MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH
WARNING: THE SURGEON GENERAL HAS DETERMINED THAT CIGARETTE SMOKING IS DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH.
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, and May Complicate Pregnancy.
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health.
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking by Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal Injury, Premature Birth and Low Birth Weight.
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Cigarette Smoking Contains Carbon Monoxide.
They forgot to include: WARNING: Cigarette Smoking Makes You Stink Like Hell.
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