- April 23, 2024
-
-
Loading
Loading
Flagler County’s proposed ban on hiring smokers has stirred the ire of rights groups, but the county’s plan to reduce its current staff’s nicotine intake is less controversial and already underway.
“We have free classes, we have brochures, we have tools to quit,” said Theresa Williams, Flagler County Health Department Tobacco Program manager.
The county's tobacco-cessation program is available to all Flagler County residents, she said.
It is free, and the county encourages, but does not require, current staff members who smoke to take advantage of it. Tobacco cessation classes run for six weeks at the Florida Hospital Flagler, and can include free nicotine-replacement patches and gum.
“We’re finding that most people, maybe 70% to 80%, need that extra help to be able to quit,” Williams said. “They have the heart to do it, they just need the tools.”
One man Williams recently treated works for the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, which transitioned to tobacco-free over the summer, she said. He’d smoked since he was a teenager and came in for treatment after a heart attack. It took him just a few weeks to lick the habit.
The Centers for Disease Control call cessation programs an effective way for employers to tackle the higher cost associated with employee smoking. A 2009 CDC report on tobacco-use treatment says paying for cessation treatments is “the single most cost-effective health insurance benefit for adults that can be provided to employees.”
The money for the tobacco cessation program in Flagler County and many other Florida counties comes from the state, which won more than $11 billion in settlement money from the tobacco industry in 1998 and invested the money to fund quit programs.
Twenty-nine states
The discussion about Flagler’s proposed policy is part of a larger national discussion about nicotine-free hiring. As increasing numbers of employers have refused to hire smokers, other states are protecting smokers’ rights. To date, 29 states and Washington, D.C., have made it illegal to refuse to hire someone on the basis of their smoking habits, according to the American Lung Association.
In many workplaces that don’t hire smokers, no-nicotine hiring is often a cost-cutting measure. A CDC report from 1999 estimated that smokers cost an employer about $3,500 each year in medical expenses and lost productivity.
Smokers lose work time by taking smoke breaks and tend to take more sick days than non-smokers, according to the report. About 10% of smokers live with a smoking-related illness.
Hospitals also often won’t hire smokers, in part because many patients don’t want to smell tobacco on a health care-provider’s clothes.
Unconstitutional search
But the ACLU has called the screening tests employers use to weed out smokers a violation of workers’ privacy rights. And when the testing is done by a government body, it constitutes a suspicionless search and violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, the groups says.
Flagler County might be able to get around the constitutional argument by ditching the tobacco-screening test for potential employees and instead having them sign a statement saying they don’t smoke.
"The controversial part is the testing, Flagler County Administrator Craig Coffey said. "We may go with an affidavit instead."
If it turns out a potential employee lied about smoking on the affidavit, they could then be dismissed or disciplined for the lie.
Flagler County’s policy was determined by the County Commission in a unanimous vote Aug. 19, and is set to go into effect Oct. 1.
