A central Pennsylvania health system says it won't hire smokers

The vaunted Geisinger Health System in central Pennsylvania ushered in the new year by becoming the latest employer to resolve not to hire smokers.

The shift toward policies that ban smokers, not just smoking, has been growing in Pennsylvania and the 20 other states that allow it. Beginning in the 1980s with big companies such as Turner Broadcasting and Alaska Airlines, no-nicotine hiring practices have been embraced by police and fire departments, medical centers, even an Ohio casino.

Like these other organizations, Geisinger says its policy, effective next month, will reduce health-care costs and decrease absenteeism among its 15,000 employees, while encouraging healthier living.

But throwing the smoker out with the smoke is a controversial trend, one that makes even some longtime tobacco-control advocates uncomfortable.

Critics say that even if individual employers save money - data are scarce - there is no evidence that the hiring policies have reduced smoking rates or benefited the overall public health.

And if discriminating against smokers is OK, what about people with other legal but dangerous habits such as heavy drinking, overeating, promiscuity, or motorcycle riding?

"Employment decisions should be made based on qualifications for the job," said Michael Siegel, a physician and tobacco-control researcher at the Boston University School of Public Health. "Once we open the door to looking at a person's personal life, we open up the floodgates."

Federal and most state laws prohibit discrimination on five grounds - race, sex, age, handicap, and religion. Religious freedom is constitutionally protected, while race, sex, age, and disability are innate conditions, outside an employee's control.

A smoker, in contrast, "has only to give up smoking off the job in order to be eligible for employment," the antismoking group Action on Smoking and Health says.

That view "ignores the deeply addictive nature of smoking," said Jennifer Ibrahim, a Temple University tobacco-control policy expert. "We know that quitting doesn't happen overnight."

Marcy Marshall, a spokeswoman for Geisinger, which has banned smoking on its far-flung properties since 2007, said the new hiring policy "is a legal practice, so we don't consider it discrimination. Smokers are not a legally protected class in Pennsylvania."