Smoked out

projo.com ^ | 04-04-04 | JENNIFER LEVITZ

[SheLion]

Smoked out

Some companies now forbid workers to smoke anywhere on their property -- not on the sidewalk, not even in their cars in the parking lot.

01:00 AM EST on Sunday, April 4, 2004

BY JENNIFER LEVITZ
Journal Staff Writer

Everyone knows you can't smoke in the office anymore.

But increasingly, you can't smoke outside work either.

At Rhode Island Hospital, employees have a nickname for their designated outdoor smoking kiosks: butt huts.

The workers, however, could consider themselves indulged that they're allowed to puff on the hospital's sprawling property at all.

Because a few miles away at Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse, in Cranston, employees who want a cigarette must punch out, get in their cars, and drive off store grounds. Workers who sneak a smoke in their cars in the Lowe's parking lot can be disciplined under a corporate policy that went into effect in September. Workers at Beacon Mutual Insurance Co., in Warwick, also aren't allowed to smoke in their cars in the parking lot, or it could lead to a note in their personnel file.

Molly Clark, director of environmental health programs at the American Lung Association of Rhode Island, says the smoke-ban trend is "regulating outdoors as well" as indoors.

Companies send smokers outside, she said, only to find them huddled by the front doors in a cloud of stale smoke.

But the outdoor restrictions aren't only about secondhand smoke and unwelcoming whiffs at the front door.

Some employers, believing that smokers drive up health-care costs, are unabashedly trying to get them to quit. Companies might run into legal problems if they refuse to hire smokers, but they can make it a hassle to be one.

When toymaker Hasbro Inc. created a designated outdoor smoking area last year, "we tried to make it as inconvenient as possible," said Robert Carniaux, senior vice president of human resources. "We were hoping that we might effect some change in behavior."

CHER SILVIA wishes people would stop minding her behavior.

That behavior has included dragging on Dorals for 24 years.

In December, Silvia started RI Rights, an online activism group for Rhode Island smokers, who don't want to see the state go the way of New York and other smoke-free places. Silvia, of Tiverton, is retired and lives in Lake Placid, Fla., but she comes north for the summer.

If Rhode Island starts enacting bans all over, she said last week in a friendly, husky voice, "I can't take it."

She said employers who tell workers they can't smoke in their cars -- or on the property -- have gone too far.

"They're nannies," she said. "They've got to tell us what's best for us. I don't appreciate it at all. I can live my own life the way I want to."

Such workplace bans are ahead of what is required by Rhode Island law. Rhode Island's smoking laws, which have lagged behind those in border states, don't ban smoking in workplaces.

But that may change.

On Thursday, the House leadership introduced legislation that would ban smoking in virtually every public place, including restaurants, shopping malls and private office buildings. The bill would also require that employers who allow their workers to smoke outside "must provide an area which is physically separated from the enclosed workplace so as to prevent the migration of smoke into the workplace."

The bill sponsored by House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox represents more than six months of negotiations and marks a reversal for the House, which last year allowed similar legislation passed by the Senate to die.

Rep. Elizabeth M. Dennigan, D-East Providence, has been a leader on the smoke-ban issue during her eight years in the House.

"We certainly have more support this year. I think a lot of that has to do with what has happened regionally since we adjourned last year," Dennigan said, referring to New York and the sweeping smoking laws that have passed in Connecticut. Legislation in Massachusetts has passed the House and Senate, and the governor has promised not to veto it.

REGARDLESS of what's happening at the General Assembly, a nonprofit agency called the Worksite Wellness Council of Rhode Island is working with Rhode Island companies to change smoking policies.

The council is an affiliate of the Worksite Wellness Council of America, a national organization started in 1982 by some workers in Omaha, Neb.

The original mission was to "enhance the health and well-being of employees," thereby helping companies save money and time, according to the national council's Web site. The Omaha council's success spurred "cost-conscious" employers in other communities to form their own councils. Rhode Island's Department of Health helped local companies start the wellness council here in 1999.

The Worksite Wellness Council of Rhode Island is now its own nonprofit organization with 150 members. Jeffrey Johnson, vice president of community relations at Beacon Mutual Insurance, is president.

He said the wellness council has used Health Department statistics to "find out what is killing" Rhode Islanders.

"We've tried to take the top five things and try to find grant money and go out and make a critical difference in the workplace," he said.

He said that if employers spend money and time on their workers' health, they can "reduce health-care costs, workers' comp costs," absenteeism -- and boost productivity.

For each of four years now, the local wellness council has received a $50,000 grant from the state's share of federal tobacco money. As part of the $246-billion tobacco settlement of 1998, tobacco companies make annual payments to states.

The wellness council uses the tobacco grant money to send Debra Foley, a consultant, to workplaces. Foley said it is her job to assist employers in achieving a smoke-free status.

Foley has worked with some 175 companies over the past four years.

The majority do have some restrictions on where smoking is allowed outside building, she said.

She knows of 8 or 10 companies that have entirely smoke-free premises. And more are considering it.

"In the last month I have had four companies referred to me that are interested in going to a smoke-free campus," she said.

Policies are the most effective way to encourage smokers to quit smoking, she said.

DR. RICHARD BROWN, director of addictions research at Butler Hospital and Brown University, found it interesting that some companies are enforcing policies as a way not only to keep the air cleaner, but to change habits.

"My personal reaction is that it's a little more controversial," he said.

People tend to not like to have behaviors dictated to them, he said.

He said those workplace smoking policies, however, could be positive if the strict rules are paired with education and support for the smokers. Hasbro, Beacon Mutual, Lowe's and other companies said they did phase in their smoking policies and have offered to help employees quit with smoking cessation-classes and health fairs. Hasbro even brought in a hypnotist.

Beacon Mutual started educating and warning its smokers long before the company moved 2 1/2 years ago from rented offices to its privately owned headquarters overlooking Route 95 in Warwick. As a tenant, it could not stop employees from puffing in the hallways; as owner of its headquarters, it could.

"We told them a year before we moved that there would be no smoking on the grounds," said Johnson, the vice president of community relations.

And that there would be no smoking in the parking lot.

Some employees said, but it's my car. The company told them that they were on private property. "A couple of people did get caught," Johnson said, but it never went beyond a verbal warning. However, future offenses could result in a written warning that would become part of their personnel file.

Once in the new building, the company also banned the informal practice of smoking breaks.

"The rest of the people were saying, 'How come smokers get a break and go outside and we don't?' " Johnson said.

"We said, 'You're absolutely right. That's not fair, because we're rewarding bad behavior.' That's when we said to supervisors, you've got to stay on top of it and make sure smokers are not allowed to take breaks."

MOST OF THE NEW hires come with the understanding that they will have to go until lunchtime without a cigarette. Johnson said Beacon is doing its employees a favor.

"We can't afford to do all these self-destructive behaviors, and people are finally waking up to that fact," he said.

Down in Florida, Cher Silvia, founder of RI Rights, has been collecting data on workplace smoking bans.

Along with running RI Rights, Silvia is a member of Illinois Smokers, Florida Smokers, Florida Rights, Maine Rights, the Smokers Club forum, and more.

"This morning, I opened up 100 e-mails," she said last week. "That's just in the morning. God knows what I get in the day."

One of the big topics for the Internet groups lately is Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse and its national policy that forbids employees to smoke anywhere on the premises, including in their own cars in the parking lot.

But Lowe's national spokeswoman, Chris Ahearn, said the new policy has worked very well.

She said there have been complaints but just as many comments from employees who like working in a smoke-free environment.

"We're not telling people to stop smoking," Ahearn said. "We're saying don't smoke on our property."

With staff reports by Scott Mayerowitz

DIGITAL EXTRA: To smoke -- in public -- or not to smoke? Cast your vote on the topic at:

http://projo.com/news/smokingpoll.htm

[SheLion]

All those that say its a "filthy habit" a welcome to come to my house and check for dust, dirt, or any yellow stains on my walls. You won't find any here.. :)

This "filthy dirty habit you stink" business started with the really nasty anti-smoking natzi's.

The same here. You know, if a person has good personal hygiene, (for anyone that doesn't know what that is, it's where you bath daily, wash hair brush teeth), there is no stink.

I have 5 air purifiers in my home. I use Fabreze. I have overhead ceiling fans. I'm happy!

[Gabz]

And I'm still here!!!

Hubby ran into a couple of work problems and has been back and forth on the phone and computer......he needs to get them taken care of before he can take another break.........Once he can take a break and slice meat for me - I can have dinner on the table in 15 minutes.

The munchkin has been munching on one of her favorite snacks......baby carrots and is now drawing - so everyone in this house is happy (sort of)

[Cultural Jihad]

I don't need the government, an employer, or any other pushy idiot telling me what I can or cannot do on my own time or trying to regulate an entirely legal act. Make it illegal or shut the hell up, you ...

Condoms are perfectly legal to make, purchase, own, or use. Supposedly a private employer is being a 'pushy idiot' to prohibit their use on his or her own private property, and the only way a property owner can discourage their use is by an outright governmental ban, huh?

[SheLion]

Make it illegal or shut the hell up, you anti-smoking schmucks. While you're at it, get a life. You have WAY too much time on your hands.

High Five!

Well said!

Most of us are around the same age in here and have smoked nearly as long as everyone else. It's the ones under 30 that come in and try to tell us what we are doing wrong with "our" lives. Go figure.

I love to smoke! I love coffee and cigarettes. I have lived well and hope to live a lot longer. For those of us that grew up when smoking was acceptable, we knew back then that it was 'bad for us,' but it is legal and we made the choice to smoke. There sure is a lot worse going on in this world today besides smoking.

If that's the best anyone can do today is bash a smoker, then your right. They really need a life!

[SheLion]

The council is an affiliate of the Worksite Wellness Council of America, a national organization started in 1982 by some workers in Omaha, Neb.

Where does their funding come from? Tides Foundation? Geoge Soros? Robert Woods Johnson? MacArthur Fund? Goldman Fund? Tsunami Fund? Joyce Foundation?

Believe it or not, but their funding comes from the Tobacco Settlement Money, to which the smokers who pay state taxes on cigarettes are funding.  Yes!  Smokers are funding this personal abuse by the highly paid professional anti-smokers.

Sickening, isn't it?  Why do you think we are so damn mad?  Why do you think we are working our hiney's off trying to get the word out there.  Most of the general public believes that the Tobacco Settlement Money is being paid for by Big Tobacco. WRONG!

And most of the general public believe that it's the government paying for the TSM.  WRONG AGAIN.  The smokers are paying for the Partnerships for a Tobacco Free Everything.  They weren't around before the Tobacco Settlement Money, were they?

No.  These coalitions popped up after the MSA was agreed upon by Big T and the AG's.  All at the expense of smokers who choose to smoke a legal commodity.  The lawmakers are gluttons, believe it!  Bleeding smokers dry and yet they say they want smoke free.  Well, they can't have both!

[SheLion]

A law like that is wrong, and unworthy of being followed by me.

Well, the way the 5 states have banned smoking in every business, to include restaurants, bars, taverns and sports inn.........I personally think their TSM funding should be cut off.

By cutting off that funding, the lawmakers won't have all that cigarette tax dollars for their little pet programs anymore. AND they will have to FIRE all the highly paid professional anti-smokers working in the State Houses.

Do you know that Mass used the cigarette tax money to build a $175,000 GOLF COURSE? This money was to be used to pay for sick smokers, should there be any.

But the states are using this money for everything but. Not to help the people on welfare....not to help the sick uninsured smokers......

Oh sure, they use "some" of that money for their nasty ads on TV telling us to call them to QUIT. It's all a front so they can say "Well, we ARE using the money for smoking cessation." All well and good. But only if a person wants to stop smoking. The rest of us do not.

[T.Smith]

FYI - If you were standing in front of me smoking a cigarette I would tell you you're stupid. Anonymity has nothing to do with it.

Besides, I don't "get my jollies" this way. I really find you people quite irritating. You have a sick habit which, by you're continued indulgence, shows you're not too bright.

BTW - SheLion - I did go to your about me page. Ewwww.

[SheLion]

I have a question. The automobile is not considered private property when it is parked in the company lot? Who's property is it,then?

Not being an attorney, it's a very thin line they walk.

I really do not know how they can tell anyone they cannot smoke in their private vehicle, no matter where that private vehicle is parked.

How could they enforce this?

[SheLion]

That's my view.

That's my view, as well.

One reason the lawmakers won't make it illegal............for instance:  the Partnership for a Tobacco Free Maine (funded by the taxes smokers pay on cigarettes), spent $10,000 plus $4500 at Wiscasset Race Track in 2002.

5 Race Teams sponsored with our cigarette taxes........

Partnership for a Tobacco Free Maine not only sponsoring the race car, they are sponsoring Speedway 96!

I don't know what they did with the money in 2003.  I had a personal death in the family and didn't have time to follow-up.

PTFM is funded by the Tobacco Settlement Money, to which the people who pay cigarette taxes in Maine pay into. Is this where the money should be spent?  A Race Track?  What about the much needed health care Gov. Baldacci say we need.

To see the entire article, click here.

[SheLion]

SMOKERS' CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE STATE ECONOMY

I will be updating this page during the year. But this will give you an idea of how much smoker's contribute to each state's economy.

[Gabz]

Alzeimhers is horrible for those with it and the family members dealing with it.

Both my mothers-in-law suffered from it.

We are not sure if the alzheimer's brought on my first husband's mother's alcoholism or the other way around. I just know those years were not pleasant. Even after I was divorced I would visit her in the nursing home that she was placed in before I got married. She knew me better than either of her sons because neither they nor their children bothered visiting her often. It was a rough 10 years.

My husband's mother, a woman that consistently beat us all at trivial pursuit, knew it was coming, she was having major bouts of not knowing or remembering things and she chose the assisted living facility she wanted to live in. She died only 2 weeks after we had gotten married, not knowing that we had done so.

Neither of these women ever smoked, and it was very hard on their families to watch them slowly waste away.

If I have a tendency to get testy and take issue with the antis who claim it is only the families of smokers that suffer from the lingering deaths of loved ones, please understand why I do so. My husband, his sisters, grand daughters and I deeply miss his mother, she was only 68 when she died.

Sorry, ladies.....I just had to get that off my chest.

[Gabz]

All those that say its a "filthy habit" are welcome to come to my house and check for dust, dirt, or any yellow stains on my walls. You won't find any here.. :)

I know what you are saying.

In disclaimer, the following is talking about other threads and other message boards, not this specific thread today.

The "sheeple" claiming I have a filthy habit and claim that the walls in my house are yellow are also the sames ones who called me a liar last year and the year before when I was selling my house. All the walls in the house, but one, were either white or a lavender so pale as to be nearly white.

When I took down the artwork on the walls, some that had been there for more than 5 or 6 years the only way you knew anything had been hanging there was the hole from the picture hanger (and a couple of cobwebs that were behind some inch deep frames (oops)).

Both my husband and I smoke in the house. I'm no neat freak, but I'm not a "dirty" or "filthy" person, and neither is my husband.

Knock on wood we seemed to have solved it, but in the late summer and late fall we encountered a major mold problem in our new house..........we had a very wet late summer, fall and winter. When we first encountered it, it was everywhere. The second time it "blossomed" I did notice that it only appeared in the rooms where no one smoked at all (bedrooms) or rarely (bathroom) and the worst place was on the outside walls of the house.

Anyone who has experienced carbon monoxide poisoning understands exactly what mold poisoning does to a person, smoker or non-smoker.

[Gabz]

I am placing the appropriate sarcasm tag before I start this.............

I'm a 48 year old man, I lift weights five days a week and am in excellent physical shape, and I can keep up with most 21 year olds. I am also a smoker of 30 years.

You are a liar.

If I choose to smoke,

No you don't, you're an addict.

it's my own damned business.

No it's not, it is the business of everyone that is going to be paying for you sorry idiot when you are drowning in your own flesh because of your filthy, disgusting addiction.

I don't need the government, an employer, or any other pushy idiot telling me what I can or cannot do on my own time or trying to regulate an entirely legal act.

You wanna bet?????

OK - I can't go on with this.......there is no way I can keep up such a farce the way the twits do.

I'm sure you and everyone else (other than the twits, who don't even recognize themselves) understand exactly what I am saying.

[SheLion]

Sorry, ladies.....I just had to get that off my chest.

That's fine, Gabz! No problem.

I've never had personal experience with this disease. I just know from reports that it is devestating. More so for the family members around it, rather then the person going through it. I understand them to be in utopia. It must be a terrible way to live.........

[Gabz]

I don't like the Lowe's policy and I think it is arbitrariy and capricious because customers are permitted to smoke not only in their cars and in front of the building........but if that is how they choose to treat their employees, it is their right.

The employees can choose to find other employment.

This is not a government imposed edict, it is being done by a private employee.

I just hope all those that have been hammering that fact home, even though they are anti-smokers and don't approve of government edicts, remember this when it is the state that is forcing every other PRIVATE business to do the same thing.

Something tells me those supposed defenders of private property rights will disappear into the woodwork very quickly once the state decides to do FORCE private businesses to be non-smoking. I've seen it happen before.

The supporters of private property rights qucikly agree that places like Lowe's or their local tavern or restaurant are all of a sudden public property.

[Gabz]

You disgusting pig.

I dare you to call me stupid to my face..........

I find sanctimonious prigs such as yourself to be more than irritating. But indulge yourself all you want....thankfully I don't have to deal with such as you in my life, I live, work and play with real people.

Go back to working out or running or whatever and leave me the heck alone.............

[SheLion]

You have Freep Mail....

[MHGinTN]

And you thought this was a free country!... he says, as he puts one out in the ashtray.

[Gabz]

We all had our problems with "mom"............but she accepted me into the family long before hubby and I got married and she could be a lot of fun to be around.

She knew what was happening to her and hated it and tried her best to make her peace with her children......as far as I can tell, she succeeded. I really miss her.

time for me to get my little one tucked in....will be back later.

[SheLion]

And you thought this was a free country!... he says, as he puts one out in the ashtray.

Oh! This isn't the beloved Country "I" was born into and so remembered. The world is upside down and has gone totally nuts.