Tobacco nazi perpetrator alert: If you smoke, your fired!

[sgreger1]

http://www.examiner.com/x-17299-Hern...-lose-your-job



Florida Mayor wants to fire employees for smoking cigarettes at home.

No one denies the fact that smoking is an unhealthy habit. However, Brooksville, Florida Mayor Lara Bradburn also believes that it is the root of all evil. In an effort to enforce her personal views, she has prompted the City Council to vote on a measure on Monday, which would tie the smoking habit to an individual’s job.

“For employees, they would have one year to quit smoking or using chewing tobacco or face disciplinary action that includes termination,” Bradburn said.

Bradburn’s measure goes beyond smoking in the workplace, which is common at many companies. Her plan would make employees subject to being fired, even if they choose to smoke at home.

The law would raise questions about how far any government entity should be allowed to go in order to regulate legal, personal habits.

[GoVegan]

Sounds like the mayor has a dead battery!

[Owens187]

I don't see any way in hell that could be legal, or enforceable.



/OffTopic

GoVegan - your signature makes no sense. Unless you are capable of and are prepared to fight, you cannot have peace. Fact. Maybe in a diffrent world, but not this one. 8) :wink:

Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum...


/OnTopic

[Frosted]

What way is your country going???? The land of the free - F me.

[sgreger1]

I don't see any way in hell that could be legal, or enforceable.



/OffTopic

GoVegan - your signature makes no sense. Unless you are capable of and are prepared to fight, you cannot have peace. Fact. Maybe in a diffrent world, but not this one. 8) :wink:

Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum...


/OnTopic

Peace through victory. That's what I was always taught. The world is a bad place. It's just like the schoolyard. You may be a good, well meaning kid, but if your not ready to lay out the biggest bully in class, than you will always be taken advantage of.

In a world consumed in war, the one who can win every time is the only one who can remain at peace, since he need not worry about aggressors.

[Darwin]

Raise questions? RAISE QUESTIONS?!!

This Bradburn dame is merely the latest nanny state zealot assuming that any and all intrusions into our personal lives are justified by concerns over our health. Now it may take a certain amount of legislated behavior restraint for us to co-exist in a civil society but it does not require us to sink into an abyss of nano-control over every aspect of every minute of our lives.

This tendency seems to be proceeding without letup despite pushback from many quarters and appears to be arrowing steadily toward the Orwellian attitude that "whatever is not forbidden is mandatory". In udder woids our total safety can only be insured by total control of our behavior. Are we to be a nation of half pliant pallid worker bees and half grumpy bootlegging scofflaws? I'd like to think I'd be in the latter half but it won't be comfortable or easy--to put it mildly.

Geez I need a sterk, or three, or possibly twenty rolls. Plus a quart of absinthe, and maybe a giant spliff of Oaxacan, a tow sack of shrooms, a 6" switchblade, an H&K assault weapon, a 1968 Hemi-Charger filled with Sunoco 260 leaded premium, a two-stroke lawnmower, fifty 200 watt tungsten light bulbs, eight gallons of red lead paint, a case of Freon, half a ton of asbestos, a vat of DDT, a two pound burger with plenty of salt and a huge pile of chili-cheese fries, a 200 ounce Monster Gulp of Mountain Dew, some koala hide boots, a white seal fur coat, sixteen cartons of Gauloise smokes, a piano with real ivory keys, a house built entirely of pernambuco and Honduran mahogany, forty tubes of mid-50s Testor's model airplane glue, a lifetime supply of plastic grocery bags, and an extinct partridge in an endangered pear tree.

He who dies with the most outlawed items and prohibited substances wins.

[texasmade]

He who dies with the most outlawed items and prohibited substances wins.

start in 3,2,1....go

[sgreger1]

Raise questions? RAISE QUESTIONS?!!

This Bradburn dame is merely the latest nanny state zealot assuming that any and all intrusions into our personal lives are justified by concerns over our health. Now it may take a certain amount of legislated behavior restraint for us to co-exist in a civil society but it does not require us to sink into an abyss of nano-control over every aspect of every minute of our lives.

This tendency seems to be proceeding without letup despite pushback from many quarters and appears to be arrowing steadily toward the Orwellian attitude that "whatever is not forbidden is mandatory". In udder woids our total safety can only be insured by total control of our behavior. Are we to be a nation of half pliant pallid worker bees and half grumpy bootlegging scofflaws? I'd like to think I'd be in the latter half but it won't be comfortable or easy--to put it mildly.

Geez I need a sterk, or three, or possibly twenty rolls. Plus a quart of absinthe, and maybe a giant spliff of Oaxacan, a tow sack of shrooms, a 6" switchblade, an H&K assault weapon, a 1968 Hemi-Charger filled with Sunoco 260 leaded premium, a two-stroke lawnmower, fifty 200 watt tungsten light bulbs, eight gallons of red lead paint, a case of Freon, half a ton of asbestos, a vat of DDT, a two pound burger with plenty of salt and a huge pile of chili-cheese fries, a 200 ounce Monster Gulp of Mountain Dew, some koala hide boots, a white seal fur coat, sixteen cartons of Gauloise smokes, a piano with real ivory keys, a house built entirely of pernambuco and Honduran mahogany, forty tubes of mid-50s Testor's model airplane glue, a lifetime supply of plastic grocery bags, and an extinct partridge in an endangered pear tree.

He who dies with the most outlawed items and prohibited substances wins.

Good God Darwin, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN all me life? lol.

An extinct partridge in an endangered pear tree? I farking love it.

[Mohave]

I don't see any way in hell that could be legal, or enforceable.

You'd sure like to think not, but a year ago on another discussion board I had some correspondence with someone WHO IS A PROFESSIONAL CIVIL SERVICE EMPLOYEE OF A STATE GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT (in another state) who said this policy has been implemented (to his horror) in his workplace, and that it is enforced by adding a test for something called "cotines" (by-products of the metabolic breakdown of any tobacco product) to the routine drug testing they already do. Take that as rumor, because it is, since it is merely what I understand of what someone told me about what he was dealing with, but I don't underestimate the political force of organised pseudo health populist hysteria "for the public/your-own good" once it is off the leash and accepted in the culture as a legitimate public (government) function.

There are some jurisdictions in California that have enacted prohibitions on tobacco use inside all apartments and condominiums, and outdoors such as on the street or the beach. The latest trend in pseudo health now involves claims of third-hand tobacco dangers supposedly from someone who may not even using it, but was in a place where someone else used it or came into contact with someone who used it, and according to the zealots the second person then transmits dangerous things to yet a third person who is nowhere near any tobacco, or ever in any place where anybody has used it.

I think the fascistic history of the powerful temperance/health-improvement & alcohol-prohibition movement in the twenties and thirties shows how far this kind of self-righteous frenzy for forced "improvement" and mandatory "protection against evil profiteers and promotion of public health" can go. And promotion of the current hysteria is lavishly funded in perpetuity without accountability through the Master Settlement Agreement of the successful multi-billion dollar tobacco class action lawsuits from the 1990s. That's what pays the salary of the fat "health advocate" witch (and her staff of propagandists) spouting off about imaginary evils of snusing at the end of that 60-Minutes piece, by the way. Your money and mine at work.

[truthwolf1]

When I worked for a website branch of MicroSoft I learned that there are no drugs tests of anykind even at the main corporate.
The reason was because they want the best of the best even if they like to go home and smoke a joint or sniff a ether rag.

[sgreger1]

When I worked for a website branch of MicroSoft I learned that there are no drugs tests of anykind even at the main corporate.
The reason was because they want the best of the best even if they like to go home and smoke a joint or sniff a ether rag.

I heard Steve Jobs was smoking weed the whole time when he was coming up with Apple computers.

Drug tests for marijuana are such as waste of everyones time and money. While it is utterly unnacceptable to come to work under the influence of anything, what one does at home on their free time seems fair game to me (assuming it is not affecting their work performance). However I still think they should test for the hardcore narcotics, but ironically they stay in your system for the shortest amount of time, usually 3 days.

[WickedKitchen]

It's definitely not illegal. There are only a few protected classes that you cannot discriminate against and smokers or tobacco users are not among that group.

I think it all boils down to money. If the company pays for all or in part of your health insurance then the premiums would be higher if you used tobacco. That's a "cost" to the employer and they do have every right to manage that cost.

The ones that manage it too much will likely end up with a staff of eunuchs then there will not be enough income to support those because they suck...but at least they'll live longer so we can pay for them when they get old. Craziness.

I think that we'll see more of this sort of thing with the "new healthcare". It's a pen stroke away from everyone being tested boys and girls. Now, I'm sure there will be ways around it but 3 days of abstinence won't kill anyone. Big brother will be watching more and more in the years to come...until someone takes out the Big Brother bully in the big school yard.

[truthwolf1]

It's definitely not illegal. There are only a few protected classes that you cannot discriminate against and smokers or tobacco users are not among that group.

I think it all boils down to money. If the company pays for all or in part of your health insurance then the premiums would be higher if you used tobacco. That's a "cost" to the employer and they do have every right to manage that cost.

The ones that manage it too much will likely end up with a staff of eunuchs then there will not be enough income to support those because they suck...but at least they'll live longer so we can pay for them when they get old. Craziness.

I think that we'll see more of this sort of thing with the "new healthcare". It's a pen stroke away from everyone being tested boys and girls. Now, I'm sure there will be ways around it but 3 days of abstinence won't kill anyone. Big brother will be watching more and more in the years to come...until someone takes out the Big Brother bully in the big school yard.

I am officially on two years being smokefree.
When I talked to our healthcare provider about a year ago and told them I was smokefree they said great! but that they stopped charging smokers extra years ago so I am getting the same rate as everyone else.

[AtreyuKun]

I hate the whole world.

[sgreger1]

I hate the whole world.

Hating the world can be bad to your health. In fact, did you know that "hating the world" puts a strain of $8 billion on the health care industry each year? Did you know that it costs 6.5% more to provide health care to someone who routinely hates the world an an average lifetime basis?

From now on, those who hate the world need to pay a $1 a day tax and you will be fired from your job if you hate the world on company and/or private time.