The No-Smoking Bonus

Michael and Susan Stonebreaker quit smoking on Feb. 8. They are again enjoying the smell of ocean breezes, and he has even returned to the long-distance bicycling that he had been forced to give up.

The nicotine-free couple also is enjoying the admiration showered on them by their son and daughter--both non-smokers.

The Stonebreakers’ success isn’t just a personal victory. The credit is shared by Teledyne Ryan International, where Michael is an Apache helicopter program engineer and Susan is a sheet metal fabrication inspector.

Beyond the health benefits, the Stonebreakers have another reason for remaining nicotine-free: After six months, Teledyne Ryan will reimburse each smoke-free employee for half of the six-week program’s $225 enrollment fee.

The Stonebreakers are among a growing number of former smokers who used company-paid smoke cessation program benefits to kick their habits.

“Smoking-cessation programs will be part of 80% of employee benefits packages within five years,” predicted John Frederitz, program coordinator of Smoke No More, a stop-smoking program offered through Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation.

Corporate concern for employees’ lungs is overdue, he said, adding that “computer hardware and electronic equipment have had nice air to breathe for years.”

Teledyne Ryan made the same pledge to the Stonebreakers that it made to 30 other employees who enrolled in the smoking cessation program in December. Thirty-one of the participants are still not smoking, and 28 employees who joined a second class that started in February are on the way toward the same reimbursement.

“I quit with (others) when I wouldn’t do it by myself,” said Michael Stonebreaker, who said he foresees “no problem” with staying smoke-free until late June.

San Diego’s strict anti-smoking regulations, coupled with societal pressures against the habit, pushed the Stonebreakers into action.

“It just got to be such a hassle and it offended so many people that we had to do something,” Stonebreaker said. “It got to the point that I wasn’t smoking at my desk anymore. I’d get up and go outside.”

Stonebreaker calculated that it takes five minutes to smoke a cigarette--or 50 minutes for the 10 he smoked each day. But he readily admitted that “you never just go out and smoke a cigarette. So it really takes 15 minutes” for each break.

That’s one practical reason employers are willing to get involved with employees’ personal habits. Megatek Corp. recently paid for 90 of its employees to attend a program conducted by Scripps Clinic.

The San Diego Union and Tribune will turn to a Scripps-developed program starting Wednesday to help its employees adapt to a recently adopted ban on smoking in the newspapers’ office.

In addition to time wasted sneaking those cigarettes, “non-smoking employees are more likely to have lower health-care costs than smokers,” said Dr. E. Fisher Coil, health consultant for General Dynamics Corp.’s Convair Division. “But, in general, they’re also easier to clean up after, and they’re not as likely to (start) fires in wastebaskets.”

However, classifying the cost-effectiveness of smoking cessation programs is difficult.

“The national estimates for (smoking-related) costs range from $624 to $6,000 per employee, beyond what a non-smoking employee costs,” according to Mario Tamayo, health and fitness director for the Convair Recreational Assn., which sponsored General Dynamics’ most recent smoking classes. The association plans a case study to compare the new non-smokers’ health-care costs to those of previous years.

At Rohr Industries, corporate medical officer Brady Hartman acknowledged that “there isn’t a lot of good, hard data on the long-range cost effectiveness of programs. Exercise, control of cholesterol, stopping the use of tobacco--all of those things help reduce health-care costs because the alternatives are lung cancer, emphysema, heart operations and the like.”

Smoking-cessation clinics, Hartman added, are “part of the clear trend toward business and industry providing more health incentives and health care for employees.” The work place is “one of the best intervention sites possible because so many people go to work every day, and it features a stable social support network,” according to Marlene Maheu, a doctoral candidate at the California School of Professional Psychology in La Jolla. Maheu, whose dissertation focuses on stop-smoking programs in industry, supervised the recent programs at General Dynamics and Rohr.

Old-fashioned peer pressure, when coupled with prizes and recognition, can turn around even the most persistent smokers, if they really want to quit, Maheu said.

“It’s not easy for the hard-core types to quit, but if it’s costing ($600 to $6,000) for employers to employ smokers, corporate health programs are worthwhile.”