Deputies Accept Pact Banning Smoking

Newly hired Ventura County sheriff’s deputies, sergeants and investigators would be prohibited from smoking--both on and off duty--under the unusual terms of a labor contract approved by deputies and awaiting final county approval.

The provision, which would not apply to smokers already employed by the department, is intended to reduce health-care and pension expenditures, which could cost as much as $5,000 more annually for a smoker than for a nonsmoker, said Ron Komers, director of the county’s Personnel Department.

The 550-member Ventura County Sheriff’s Assn. voted last week by a 9-1 margin to ratify the contract, said senior deputy Gary White, the union’s representative.

If the two-year contract is approved by county supervisors next week as expected, the Sheriff’s Department would be the first police agency in the state and one of a few in the nation to ban hiring of smokers, representatives of law enforcement groups said Tuesday.

The contract would require new employees to sign an agreement each year stating that they will not smoke, Komers said. Violators could be fired, he said.

California’s workers compensation law presumes that heart trouble, respiratory problems and cancer developed by public safety officers are job-related, Komers explained. Officers who develop job-related heart disease are entitled to a disability pension equal to half their final salary. A disability that is not job-related entitles employees to one-third their final salary, Komers said.

In addition to the no-smoking policy, the county will develop a set of physical fitness standards that all sheriff’s deputies will have to meet or face a 5% salary cut, Komers said.

A representative from the Tobacco Institute, a Washington-based trade association for American tobacco product manufacturers, criticized the measure as an infringement on personal freedom.

“I think from the standpoint of privacy rights, it’s a terrible idea,” said Walker Merryman. “I suppose they could then tell officers that they could not drink liquor, they could not eat foods with a high salt content.”

Ventura County modeled its policy on one instituted by the Alexandria, Va., Police Department in 1977. That policy was rescinded in 1986 and replaced with one that allows smoking in designated areas within police buildings, because the department had “trouble with enforcement,” said spokeswoman Lucy Crockett.