DJ Happy

Could Philip Morris include a clause in their employment contracts saying that failure to smoke will result in dismissal? As ridiculous as it may seem, it would appear that current legislation would support them if they did.

I work for an advertising agency and while we are not threatened with dismissal, we are fined if we are caught consuming a brand that is in competition with a client of ours. So I am not allowed to eat Burger King (we work with McDonalds), I am forbidden to drink Pepsi (Coke is one of our clients) and so on. The only exception is cars, as it would be ridiculous to make everyone get new cars to match our client list. After all, how can we be expected to persuade others to use these brands if we don't use them ourselves?

So I can sort of understand the restrictions discussed on this thread, but only if there is a legitimate reason for imposing them. For instance, will the company actually save money in its employee medical insurance if they can assure the insurers that none of its employees smoke? And (considering that the cost of medical insurance was the only reason cited for prohibiting smoking) can the employees smoke if they take out their own medical insurance and are not covered by the company?

Athletes are often prohibited in their contracts from participating in certain activities such as skiing and skydiving. Their employers invest a lot of money in them and don't want to see that investment wasted through something completely out of their control. For instance, Chicago Bulls point guard Jay Williams was prohibited from riding a motorbike by the terms in his contract as it was deemed a dangerous activity. Regardless, Jay Williams bought a motorbike, rode it and had a serious accident on it which has pretty much led to his retirement before he ever played a professional game, meaning that the Bulls wasted a draft pick and millions of dollars in salary on someone who will never play for them. Or rather, it would've meant that had they not included the clause in his contract.

Surely its the same for other companies? Why invest in someone who is smokes, meaning that he is more likely than others to run up huge medical bills that will result in bigger insurance premiums and could also make him unable to work? If you want to argue that targeting smokers while ignoring people who are overweight is inconsistent, I would probably agree with you. But then, maybe we should consider ourselves lucky that smoking is the only activity prohibited (by some) when there are so many other dangerous activities that they could include as well.