Rights Go Up in Smoke

Today it’s smokers. Tomorrow it might be couch potatoes, or rock climbers or sunbathers or people who just don’t get the whole-wheat thing.

Everybody ought to be worried about the new workplace trend, reported by Daniel Costello in The Times last week, of hiring only nonsmokers and firing smokers who don’t quit -- all of it enforced by random nicotine tests. The concept of “at-will” employment is heading down a frightening road when employers feel they have the right to dictate how their staffs spend personal time.

The ostensible reason for this snooping into personal habits is that smoking increases health-insurance costs and lowers productivity. Some employers charge smokers more for their health benefits. That’s fair enough because private insurers do the same. But employers should stop there.

It’s not clear that smoking costs employers more than, say, obesity. Are weigh-ins next, backed by cholesterol tests? Sunbathers are more likely to get melanoma. Rock climbers risk expensive injuries. People with more daring-than-average sex lives incur their own set of risks.

Nobody besides a smoker wants to be caught these days saying smokers have rights -- even if those rights have been limited almost to their owners’ property lines. In today’s society, it can be dangerous to defend a smoker, which might mean we are incurring a significant health risk just in writing this.