So as not to hijack the thread on disposing of cigarette butts I posit this query.
How is it legal for an employer, or the state of NY, etc. to ban smoking outdoors? When did the employer/state own all the air outside?
Particularly where I work smokers will be banned on campus soon. Due to health issues, in a 60 acre site? I think not. They are not making me stand in their air, or even nearby.
Yet, the obese people on the same site are offered motorized scooters to manuver around the place. I can guarantee that the obese people lose 10 times the amount of work time than the smokers. I don’t mean to criticize those that are obese, but why is one group of “outcasts” treated so differently than another?
As a reformed smoker I still feel the inequity in this situation.
It’s not about you losing working time it’s about the quality of the air that other people are sharing with you.
A smoker’s smoke goes into the air and other people breathe it. A fat person on a scooter is not polluting anyone else’s air. That’s a silly analogy. You should be complaining about car and truck exhaust, not scooters.
Cigarette smoke isn’t contained to just the person smoking, whereas people in motorized wheelchairs don’t have a direct effect on the health of others.
Well, it’s a public shared resource, so the State has had authority over it for centuries. They can and do regulate or ban you putting all sorts of pollutants into the air; this particular law may or may not be a good idea, but it’s consistent with other law that they can do that. And a private employer/citizen on their own property has even more authority in some ways; they can just tell you “stop smoking or leave” and that’s that.
A local (huge) business by me recently banned smoking on their property. Not even just on their property, but they banned smoking during the work shift. So as long as you are on the schedule, you can’t smoke (most employees aren’t allowed to leave the property during the workday). They did this for a few reasons.
Before they totally banned it, they confined it all to one area, the reason for that was that they regularly give tours to people that come from all over the world to sign multi-million dollar contracts (I can almost guarantee everyone here has eaten, smoked or swallowed something this company makes) and in order to make a better impression they didn’t like have to wade through a pool of smokers outside every door. This way they kept them all by one area and kept the people they were giving tours to away from that little corner. Eventually they just did away with it all together.
When they got rid of it, they offered (and still do I believe) free smoking cessation programs to anyone who wants them. Doctor’s help, meds, patches, programs etc. Health insurance rates are set for the company as a whole and it takes into account the number of smokers the company has. So even though YOU might not smoke, your premiums are being driven up because your co-workers do smoke. Banning smoking on the property was one way to help people give up smoking and bring the health insurance rates back down. I haven’t asked them recently how it’s going, but about a year into it, I think they said they had something like 15 or 20 people quit. I would guess they have about 350 employees, not sure how many smoked before the ban.
As for the scooters, perhaps smoking causes the rates to go up more the obesity, but my guess is that they’re more worried about obese people getting hurt on the job. If someone is 60 pounds overweight, has bad knees, walks a quarter mile and then has to go up a flight a stairs, they’re more likely to trip then if they can scoot around the campus. It could be to help avoid a workers comp claim.
Also, if you have visitors to the campus, it can be a PR thing. “Here at ____ we don’t allow smoking for such and such reasons, we also loan out motorized scooters to any of our employees that have trouble walking since we know the campus is so large”.
The company I work for completely bans smoking on all company property, indoors and outdoors, by anyone at any time. Off duty and smoking in your car in the parking lot? Tough; it’s an automatic disciplinary action. Background: they’re a health insurance company, a large one. They do offer employees extensive help with quitting, including professional counseling, free nicotine replacement (patches or gum) and Chantix at no charge. (The free Chantix is only for their own employees; so far as I know, it’s never, ever offered as part of their pharmacy coverage packages)
This company also has a weird obsession with coffee machines on the property for some reason. You can bring in your own coffee, you can buy it in the cafeteria, you can make instant, but they do not allow coffee machines of any type on their properties. No one seems to know why, either. Weird.
Well, speaking as someone who quit smoking three years ago, the companies better invest in quite a few more of those power chairs for those who replace smoking with eating!
I’m guessing it could have been due to cigarette butts on the ground as much as smoke in the air. We used to have a smoking area in my old sixth form college which had to be swept every day.
You know, they don’t own the air, but they don’t let you shoot randomly into that air. They don’t let you release anthrax randomly into that air. Why? Because you might hurt someone.
Not commenting on the merits of the ban for now, but I’d love to see you back up this “guarantee.” Obese people don’t get 15-minute eating breaks every couple of hours. Obesity is associated with a bunch of problems that can reduce productivity, of course, but so is smoking.
I wish states would be intellectually honest and just ban the damned things instead of taxing the hell out of them and saying you can only smoke in 3 designed areas in the whole state.
In an episode of NewsRadio Dave banned smoking in the office (it might have been NY fire code). Bill pointed out that they must, by law, have a designated smoking area in the office somewhere. When Dave asked Bill for suggestions, Bill came up with one of the most brilliant ideas ever…“How about a mobile 10 foot radius around me”
Bolding mine. I hear about this complaint quite a lot, but I’ve never personally worked anywhere that smokers get extra breaks just to smoke. Is it very common in the US?
In my last job we got a set number of 15 minute breaks. I used mine to smoke, nonsmokers would do, well, whatever it is nonsmokers do with a 15 minute break.
I am certainly sympathetic to people who don’t want to inhale cigarette smoke. I can also understand that the common practice of allowing employees to smoke outdoors essentially created a wall of smoke at the entrance that everyone had to walk through. However, I fail to see how a cigarette being smoked several yards away in the open air could harm anyone else. It’s especially silly when the people in question are anywhere near a road. They’re inhaling more hazmat from the passing vehicle exhaust fer crissake.
An actuary knows why. A “bring-your-own” coffee maker means your employees are going to be regularly handling twelve cups of 170º fluid in a glass carafe which isn’t part of a regular maintenance/replacement program, and without any safety training. Suppose it’s heated dry one day and someone just shrugs and turns it off without properly disposing of the carafe? Next employee comes along the next day and makes a fresh pot with no idea the carafe has lost its temper, and when they pick it up, the weight of the pot exerts enough pressure on the handle for the pot to crack in half, delivering an aromatic and refreshing scalding injury.
Company’s now on the hook for permitting an unsafe condition.
Ex-smoker of almost three years, and I find I enjoy the relative smoke-freeness of a lot of places. Some place wants to selectively ban an activity because it has a non-zero cost? Great, have at it. As long as they’re not running afoul of a protected class or making some other egregious error in judgment (hypocrisy of targeting one group but not another does not rise to this level), it’s their prerogative.
However, this namby-pamby “oh, but you’re polluting my precious snowflake of a lung” is pure pablum. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as second hand smoke, but No, Virginia, you’re not being harmed in any material way by smelling some guy’s lit cigarette as you walk into the building. Get over yourself and quit faking outrage. Or, realize that you’re outrage is built of smoke and mirrors and is just an excuse to pretend to have something real to complain about. Panzy.
