Showing posts with label smokers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label smokers. Show all posts

Monday, February 14, 2011

Hospitals Shift Smoking Bans to Smoker Ban

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Smokers now face another risk from their habit: it could cost them a shot at a job.

More hospitals and medical businesses in many states are adopting strict policies that make smoking a reason to turn away job applicants, saying they want to increase worker productivity, reduce health care costs and encourage healthier living.

The policies reflect a frustration that softer efforts — like banning smoking on company grounds, offering cessation programs and increasing health care premiums for smokers — have not been powerful-enough incentives to quit.

The new rules essentially treat cigarettes like an illegal narcotic. Applications now explicitly warn of “tobacco-free hiring,” job seekers must submit to urine tests for nicotine and new employees caught smoking face termination.

This shift — from smoke-free to smoker-free workplaces — has prompted sharp debate, even among anti-tobacco groups, over whether the policies establish a troubling precedent of employers intruding into private lives to ban a habit that is legal.

“If enough of these companies adopt theses [sic] policies and it really becomes difficult for smokers to find jobs, there are going to be consequences,” said Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, who has written about the trend. “Unemployment is also bad for health.” >>> A. G. Sulzberger | Thursday, February 10, 2011

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Fatties Die Just As Smokers Do! (But Don't We All?)

THE TELEGRAPH: Teenage obesity carries the same risk of premature death as those who smoke ten cigarettes a day, researchers have found.

Photobucket
Photo courtesy of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung

The number of early deaths in people who smoked more than ten cigarettes a day but were a healthy weight was the same as non-smokers who were obese, a study has found.

Smoking between one and ten cigarettes a day produced a similar risk to being overweight but not obese, the research in the British Medical Journal showed. Teenage Obesity Is as Bad for Health as Smoking: Research >>> By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor | Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback) – Free delivery >>>

Sunday, January 27, 2008

The Disgraceful Doctors in the National Health Service!

I’ll tell you what the NHS cannot afford: It cannot afford to treat the freeloaders coming from abroad, and it cannot afford to treat the illegal immigrants, either. Those are the people it cannot afford to treat. Leave the ‘old’ alone, and leave the ‘smokers’ alone, too.

How disgusting these doctors are! Do your bloody job! Heaven knows, you’re paid enough for doing it.


THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Doctors are calling for NHS treatment to be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives.

Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.

Fertility treatment and "social" abortions are also on the list of procedures that many doctors say should not be funded by the state.

The findings of a survey conducted by Doctor magazine sparked a fierce row last night, with the British Medical Association and campaign groups describing the recommendations from family and hospital doctors as "out­rageous" and "disgraceful". Don't treat the old and unhealthy, say doctors >>> By Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)

Thursday, June 21, 2007

More Discrimination Against Smokers. If You Smoke, You Can’t Foster

YAHOO NEWS (UK): Children could be denied a foster family if one of their prospective carers smokes under new guidelines to come into force on the day England goes smoke free.

The UK's leading fostering charity, the Fostering Network, has drawn up new guidance for local authorities and agencies recommending smokers do not foster children under five. Smokers ‘to be stopped from fostering’ (more)

THE GUARDIAN:
Smokers to be prevented from fostering young children

Mark Alexander