You Mean They Can Legally Not Hire Me Because I Smoke?

I was looking at postings in oregon just for fun the other day and noticed that it stated you could not use tobacco products at work or off work. Pretty interesting stuff.

Mostly this is within the healthcare industry of those states. But, as said in the article, its a slippery slope. At times like these, we need cool heads representing us to the world at large. This is why I think things like our Radio Show are important. We need cool and classy talking heads representing us, the pipe smoking community, to the world at large. We need the Paul Creasy's, Gregory Pease's, and Brian Levine's of our community speaking for us. I cringe every time I hear the knuckle dragging parts of our community lashing out (and I put myself in the dirty knuckle group). We will only be able to fight these things with intellect and facts. IMO
This is also why I think that supporting your local pipe clubs and UPCA and IAPSC is very, very important. Much more important and just beating chests on a forum. Just my 2 cents.
Thanks for the post. It's something that we should all be aware of, for sure.

Dropout, tune-out, light-up and thumb your nose at the Smoking Nazis. A Pipe smoker is now anti-establishment? who would have thunk it.

Well, once you get to be a certain age, we are all anti-establishment. While they can't say publicly that they won't hire us because we are too old, I don't see people lining up to hire us after we hit 50 anyways. And, they keep slipping the age for retirement further and further away.

Actually, if one has the required skill sets and/or education and experience they are readily hired, no matter their age. At 68 I still get employment offers albeit, from companies which are not overly concerned with my personal habits, only in my work ethic, skills and knowledge.
If the trend of politicians attacking smokers is to be slowed, small groups of like minded people, such as the members of this board, need to get active in the selection of elected officials. This means forming political action committees with moneys enough to get the attention of candidates and/or becoming leaders of local Dem and Republican party organizations.
Sitting in front of the computer, bemoaning the state of the state, has no effect on politics. The only way to change current situation is to develop medical evidence that shows smoking to be beneficial and can refute current beliefs, or, and this would be really hard, change the mind set of the majority of voters so that "individual responsibility," as opposed to the social state mindset, becomes the predominate belief of the voter. Most voters, and activists, today favor the idea that the state is the answer to all problems and that the wishes of the majority should be the rule and not a Democratic Republic where the rights of the minority need to be protected.
The most effective method of changing the way the majority think is to bombard them with "the message." In order to pull this off a lot of money (billions of moneys) would have to be available for research and a long campaign of advertising. All of which would have to be sophisticated enough, as opposed to the "global warming" people, that the campaign would not be open to rational attack.
In the current political environment smokers are not relevant! We do not vote in a sufficiently large block, nor do we provide the funds to be relevant to a politician running for office. I suspect things will not change, with regard to tobacco and smokers, too much demonizing, insufficient numbers and moneys to make a change.
We smokers are most likely permanently reduced to wringing our hands and preaching to the choir on the internet. Smokers are too disorganized and ineffectual a minority of the electorate to be accorded any weight in the political process. Just looking over the some of the various postings here indicates that the membership runs the gamut from nihilists to socialists and everything in between. Hardly the cohesive grouping necessary assault and change public opinion as it exists today.

Reading Conlejm's link made me wonder how long nicotine stayed in your system. This link here addresses several of the ways nicotine is tested for and how long it stays in your system. Good information if true, I didn't check the author's sources.
Not hiring people for making potentially harmful lifestyle choices is on heck of a slippery slope! What's next: registered gun owners? Sexually promiscuous? People who drive over the speed limit? People who voted against the political ideology du jour? Extreme examples, but that's the nature of a slippery slope.

Interesting.

Whoever would have thought we would be having this conversion in a free country regarding a legal product/activity? Maybe if we can get another pipe smoker in the White House things might change for the better. Any nominations???

How is this even legal? Yes, smoking is a choice, but it is not against the law to smoke, so I don't know how this can be Constitutionally upheld. Will be interesting to see what legal challenges this creates. I suppose if I had a prescription to smoke weed I'd be in the clear, right? Probably congratulated on my "progressive choice" in using natural products to conquer my ills….

The policy will not affect existing employees...

Click to expand...

Should be interesting when a trainer of new employees goes off to take a smoke break while warning the others that if they join him they lose their job…

I'm with tuold and pipefish
I wonder if it can be contested. Coalsmoke's post quoted them as specifically emphasizing nicotine, as if they had zero tolerance for nicotine. Granted that if you each a concentrated batch of it, it will kill you. But it's a legal substance, in legal delivery systems.
Even tomatoes and eggplants.
Do zero-tolerance nicotine employers have a way to tell if your nicotine was from a tomato? And how the heck does "the patch" hurt someone in the office?
I think it's not only ridiculous, but I'm astounded that these rules haven't been challenged. Or have they? (Crap. Now I have to go Googling.)
I'm not so concerned about the attack on smoking/smokers. No need to go into its health benefits/consequences. I am most curious about about the obvious disregard of personal liberty -- in a country that until this century was defined by it. Or the liberty of small groups (such as smokers). You sometimes have to remind Americans themselves that America is *not* a simple democracy. We don't pledge allegiance to the democracy. Wasn't it designed from the get-go as a republic to represent even minority groups, protect them from the another form of tyranny, majority rule. (Well, no, it hasn't happened enough in any one time period to become habit-forming, but it's still something to strive for and was the vision of the founders, anyway). We live in a democratic republic, or did. The rights of minority groups are supposed to be as valued and as defend-able as the rights of the majority. Or used to be. Or were supposed to.
It seems like such a simple case for a court to throw such a hiring provision out the window. Why has it even lasted long enough to make it to the forums here?
Smokers are exercising personal freedom to indulge in a legal pleasure. You can ask them not to smoke in your car, in your home, your motel rooms, or in your business establishment, fine. But how could any restriction about what a citizen does in their own time be legally enforceable?
I'm waiting for the challenge. Surely someone's going to challenge this. (Or have they? Eeesh. Now I have to go look for that. Damn my curiosity!)

Oh my golly! It was upheld...
http://bizactions.com/pop_artsam.cfm?id=1091,751&type=2
They fired him entirely based on the results of his urine test, which showed positive for nicotine.
His case failed because he alleged invasion of privacy (when he had smoked near McDonald's and on the street). And he alleged denial of employee benefits or something, which the court ruled he had no right to, since he was a smoker.
He had not smoked at the company or around company employees. Only on his own free time.
... ends by saying smokers have some protection from this in only 29 or 30 states. The rest, yeah... they can getcha.

So... let me get this straight. We're moving toward putting smokers out of paid employment and putting them on public welfare.
Well, that's just genius.
Quick now, who else wants to be a taxpayer in a system like this? (er, wait a minute... to get out of being a tax payer, I just have to light one up and fail my pee test. Cool!).

One of the things that gall me about these policies is the unequal application in the health care setting. The rank and file workers such as myself are subject to rigid non-smoking policies while the physicians are either exempt or flaunt their immunity to repercussions from indulging themselves in between case smoke breaks. Granted the doctors are mostly not hospital employees, but it sure doesn't engender a "team approach" to health care. It also shows me it's not the doctors who are making these asinine rules. Well, if I'd been a better student many years ago I suppose I could be one of those who can do whatever the hell I want

ae1pt... One, I'm not certain where the heck your mind's at, buddy. Why would you connect legal tobacco use with animal abuse?
Maybe you can edit that out before the edit feature times out on the post.

I have always thought the Pledge of Allegiance was a bit odd in that it sort of has the if A = B and B = C then A = C approach. Pledge to the flag, the flag represents the liberty and justice, therefore the pledge is to liberty and justice. That being said, if you believe this then we all pledge that our practice of employment should respect our collective liberties (managed responsibly) and should be just. Rejecting applicants and employees who partake of tobacco during their off hours seems to contradict that, does it not? Although I am far too liberal to agree with some of the other views of members on this forum (but respect their rights to their views) I am upset that we have to justify ourselves for doing something as time-honored and benign and enriching as pipe smoking. Warren's idea of getting out the message would seem to be the best. I seriously doubt that there will ever be satisfactory (statistically significant) research to prove pipe smoking has more good than bad, but getting visibility for our message can be done. How about taking the message to NPR? They take on a wide variety of topics and this has more clout than many of the offerings...

tuold... the one article I read said pretty much the same. It may be legal for a business (hospital or otherwise)to have such a hiring policy, but it told how unwise it was -- and why it would backfire on them.

This whole thing is ridiculous... I hate how everyone thinks that smoking is so horrible. Ever wonder what the world would be like without tobacco? I imagine it would be borderline post apocalypse now that there is no more tax revenue. What they really need is ridiculous cigarette taxes applied to a friggin Big Mac. I would bet MacDonald's has killed more people than tobacco since their founding.