Posted on 12/10/2014 7:38:58 AM PST by servo1969
From Arizona: The Pima County Board of Supervisors will vote later this month on a measure to ban smokers from being hired by their local government. Those smokers who already work for the government will face a 30 percent health-insurance surcharge.
Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry says the county will save lots of money if employees who smoke can be “replaced” over time with healthier workers. Huckelberry says this is all being done for the taxpayers: “Anything we can do to reduce [insurance] cost is beneficial.” said ol'Huck.
You Pima County government workers who smoke had better beware. There’s a target on your back. The dedication, loyalty, commitment you bring to your job – the quality of your work, doesn’t matter. The Pima County Administrator has let it be known he wants you gone, because you happen to use a legal product in your personal life and are supporting children health care with your taxes.
Liberals can make pot smoking legal in some cities, even though federal laws prohibit it. That’s okay. But if you use tobacco products, which are legal, it’s okay for liberals to discriminate against you in hiring and target your jobs for elimination.
In New York City, cigarettes cost up to 13 bucks a pack, thanks to liberal-imposed taxes. The poor can’t afford packs, so they buy “loose” cigarettes. Called “loosies.” Police were trying to arrest Eric Garner for tax avoidance by selling “loosies.” That led to his death.
Our freedom is being targeted, and country is being torn apart, by liberalism.
If we are going to go down this road, we need to also not hire others with risky behaviors, such as homosexuals. Homosexuals have much higher risks of various illnesses.
At least if we are to be intellectually honest, we can’t just single out smokers. We need to also track homosexuals, those with elevated blood pressure, overweight people, diabetics, promiscuous people, drug users, and many many others at higher health risk.
AMEN! To discriminate against people for doing something that is 100% LEGAL is sheer stupidity.
What about those who:
drink alcohol?
ride motorcycles without a helmet?
skydive?
The list can go on and on and on....
how about those who suck certain body parts that carry viral fluids?
Sensitivity training is in order here. This is tobaccoist - blatant tobaccoism.
The list can go on and on, and it will.
Luckily, there is not a decades old, court-tested, tried and true way for an employer to find out what you’ve been putting into your body on your own time.
I heard a pot activist gleefully describing how possession of alcohol (even in the privacy of your home) in banned in some cities in Alaska while private use of pot was legalized there under privacy grounds in a Supreme Court case in 1975.
Liberal democrat communism is killing more people and more economies than cigarette smoking ever will, it always has and always will.
Companies are already pee-testing for tobacco.
PING
Yes, the list will go on and on, if we go down this road.
It’s easy to pick on smokers for this sort of thing. And it’s easy to say that they want to save tax dollars for health insurance. But, as noted, this sort of policy is wrongheaded on many levels, and could well lead us to places we don’t want to go.
I picked on homosexuals in my example, because I can just hear the outcry, if anyone ever applied this standard to them. But also because homosexuals as a group are prone to many sicknesses and diseases due to their voluntary behavior.
If we say that voluntary behavior, such as smoking or homosexual behavior, should be screened out due to health concerns, then those two behaviors should be treated the same.
Nanny Stater Prohibitionists never stop at just one thing.
I think I saw an article about diet being the next target for employment discrimination. If you are not compliant, it would be grounds for termination. We are heading for broad discrimination on genetics ground.
But faggots are on the board of directors and CEOs these days. They will not be terminated for risky lifestyle choices.
We have the same rules for skydivers and MMA style fighters.
The pot smokers thing their drug is healthier (and more sacred) than tobacco and alcohol.
Yes, that was sarcasm. But nobody complained when urine testing began in earnest 25 - 30 years ago. (At least nobody in the U.S. I read an interview with a corporate recruiter who was asked why her Fortune 500 company only urine tested U.S. employees. She answered that people in other countries didn’t put up with it).
The law firm I worked at was the only employer in my entire career that didn’t urine test.
The paperwork said that IF alcohol and drugs became a problem in your work AND you did not go to them for help first, then it would become grounds for action.
You got that right. I am 100% against the Govt. and Employers having anything to do with the provision of a person’s health insurance. That results in control over the Individual with power they should not have. Insurance is about Risk of having to pay out. It should not be covering minor things — that drives up the cost for everyone. For those with chronic or expensive illnesses like cancer, that can be handled differently as well. Innovations that are less costly and just as effective never see the light of day because of the hospitals’ indebtedness to pay off expensive modes of treatment. This is especially true for cancer. A travesty to humanity.
Pima County is run by the dumbest people on earth. NOT kidding.
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