Pro-smoking

Employers ponder tough tactics to halt smoking

Howard Weyers tried the "carrot" approach by giving his employees incentives and encouragement to quit smoking. But when that didn't work, he resorted to the stick. A big stick.

Weyers, owner of a health care benefits administrator in Lansing, Mich., gave his 200 employees an ultimatum in 2004: Quit smoking in 15 months or lose your job. He refused to hire smokers. Ultimately, he extended his smoking ban to employees' spouses and monitored compliance through mandatory random blood testing.

Weyers' method, while effective, wouldn't fly in California because the state has laws that prohibit employers from making hiring or firing decisions based on employee participation in a legal activity.

About 45 million Americans, 4 million of whom live in California, smoke cigarettes despite more than three decades of public efforts to encourage people to quit.

California, on both the state and local levels, has been at the forefront of anti-smoking efforts with laws to ban smoking in public places. A law went into effect in January that prohibits drivers from smoking when children are in the car. Still, smoking costs the state an estimated $8.6 billion in direct medical costs and $7.3 billion in lost productivity a year, according to the California division of the American Cancer Society.

In addition to lost work hours, employers have a vested interest in getting their workforce to kick the habit, given that they pay a large portion of health care costs and are the main source of health insurance for more than half the population. Howard Weyers tried the "carrot" approach by giving his employees incentives and encouragement to quit smoking. But when tha... more

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