Smokers ‘Bad Business,’ Surgeon General Warns

U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said today that smokers cost their employers about $4,600 each more than nonsmokers annually and are “simply bad business.”

Koop, addressing about 200 employees of the Cigna Corp. to kick off a company anti-smoking campaign, said smokers miss work 55% more often than nonsmokers and take more breaks than their non-smoking colleagues.

Smokers, he said, see a doctor 50% more than nonsmokers, use the health insurance system 50% more, and among working-age people have twice the death rate.

In his first official visit to an insurance company, the surgeon general said that if anybody should be interested in the health problem of smoking “it should be an insurance company.”

Some studies have shown, he said, that smokers also have more accidents than nonsmokers, although he cautioned that such studies have not proven whether smoking is the cause behind the higher accident rate.

“The smoker doesn’t have any legal rights by law,” Koop said, adding that “The nonsmoker has had a right to a safe work environment since 1806.”

That right has been upheld in numerous legal cases, he said.

“The nonsmoker almost always wins,” especially in cases involving the government, he said.

A few years ago, Koop said, the militant nonsmoker was annoyed by smokers. “Now he’s not just mad, he’s afraid.”