Action on Smoking and Health Defends Employment Discrimination Against Smokers

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) yesterday issued a press release which defends discriminatory employment policies by which employers refuse to consider job applications from smokers and fire existing smokers even if the smoking takes place off-the-job and in the privacy of the employees' own homes.

According to the press release, which mentions that ASH sent a letter to Washington State legislators urging them to reject a proposed bill that would outlaw this type of discrimination:

"In summary, ASH argues that, to permit people who insist on smoking, even at the expense of their jobs, to continue doing so without paying any of the added health costs, the bill would:

* force companies and their nonsmoking employees to unfairly bear the huge and totally unnecessary health care, premature disability, and other costs of smoking;
* place companies in this state at a significant disadvantage compared with competitors in other states where the companies can slash their health care costs by not hiring smokers;
* deter companies from locating plants, offices, etc. in this state because they must then bear the huge and totally unnecessary costs of employee smoking."
* deter companies from firing workers who happen to be smokers and who deserve to be fired simply because the company is afraid of law suits if the workers are smokers;
* open the door to purely frivolous law suits by any smoker who was not hired, or who was not promoted as he had hoped or expected;
* permit law suits based upon pure statistics whenever the percentage of smokers – for whatever reason, including valid business reasons – happens to be lower than expected."

The Rest of the Story

To see the fallacy in ASH's argument in support of policies that discriminate against smokers, let's reiterate their arguments, except first let's substitute the phrase "pregnant women" for smokers and consider how these arguments would fare against a bill intended to prevent employment discrimination against women of childbearing age:

"In summary, ASH argues that, to permit people who insist on being pregnant, even at the expense of their jobs, to continue doing so without paying any of the added health costs, the bill would:

* force companies and their male and non-pregnant female employees to unfairly bear the huge and totally unnecessary health care and other costs of pregnancy;
* place companies in this state at a significant disadvantage compared with competitors in other states where the companies can slash their health care costs by not hiring women of childbearing age;
* deter companies from locating plants, offices, etc. in this state because they must then bear the huge and totally unnecessary costs of pregnancy among female employees."
* deter companies from firing workers who happen to be young women and who deserve to be fired simply because the company is afraid of law suits if the workers are young women of childbearing age;
* open the door to purely frivolous law suits by any young woman who was not hired, or who was not promoted as she had hoped or expected;
* permit law suits based upon pure statistics whenever the percentage of young women – for whatever reason, including valid business reasons – happens to be lower than expected."

I hope it is clear that the precise reasoning that ASH uses to defend employment discrimination against smokers could also be used, in an identical fashion, to defend employment discrimination against women of childbearing age and to argue against laws that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex.

There may be valid reasons to support and promote discrimination against smokers in the workplace like ASH is doing, but these are certainly not them.

ASH is going to have to do a lot better than this to convince me that employment discrimination against smokers is reasonable and to stop me from supporting and promoting Washington's House Bill 2614.