Why don’t they just ban tobacco? Smoking is bad but this is going too far – as long as it is legal. Well meaning nanny do-gooders are just as intrusive as self righteous moral arbiters, says Leonard Glantz. Glantz is a professor of health law, bioethics and human rights at the Boston University School of Public Health. I agree. Perhaps some legal eagles will weigh in here.
"THE World Health Organization, the health branch of the United Nations, has announced that it will no longer hire smokers. Its spokeswoman said, "As a matter of principle, WHO does not want to recruit smokers." The "principle," according to the spokeswoman, is: "WHO tries to encourage people to try and lead a healthy life."
By this action WHO has transformed its war against smoking to a war against smokers. On its new job application, WHO asks applicants if they are smokers. If the applicant answers "yes," the application will be discarded.
With the hanging of the "No Smokers Need Apply" sign on its door, WHO has joined a long line of bigots who would not hire people of color, members of religious minorities, or disabled or gay people because of who they are or what they lawfully do.
Under WHO’s policy, if Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein and Adolf Hitler applied for a job, only Hitler, the sole nonsmoker in the group (and someone who would not allow anyone to smoke near him), would be eligible for consideration.
In adopting this policy, WHO is not acting in its capacity as a health care organization but rather as an employer. And the principle that it argues for is that employers can impose job requirements based on what its employees do off the job. One can only imagine WHO’s reaction to a tobacco company that requires all its employees to smoke or a gun company that requires them all to keep a gun and ammunition in their homes. The position that WHO has adopted would neatly support such ludicrous employment requirements……"
Accidental Blogger 
4 responses to “Self Righteous Smoke Screen”
There was a similar story in the news a few weeks back about a teacher at a Catholic school. She was unmarried and became pregnant, and they fired her on the basis that, as spelled out in her contract, all teachers are required to live the Catholic moral truths that they teach. She was pregnant, which either means God’s been at it again with those virgins or she sinfully engaged in premarital sex.
I was OK with that decision. This, not so much. Does the WHO propose the same limitations on all people who engage in unhealthy behavior? Lazy slubs who don’t exercise, you’re fired. Overeaters, don’t bother to apply. Et cetera. I think not.
The problem is, the WHO does seem to have a point. The organization is going to hire people who smoke to tell people not to smoke because it’s unhealthy? Huh. I just thought of that as I was typing. One could conceivably argue that the away-from-work smoking habits of employees DO affect the organization’s ability put out its message or do its job. Listeners are rightly skeptical of anyone with the message, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
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Actually, the WHO can remain faithful to its anti-smoking message by banning smoking in the work place and instituting smoking cessation programs for its employees, instead of putting a blanket ban on hiring smokers who may be competent in public health policies. As you said, should the WHO also reject applicants who don’t regularly exercise, don’t eat healthy foods or indulge in unprotected sex? As Leonard Glantz points out, smoking is a bad habit but not yet illegal anywhere.
That Catholic school teacher should not have been fired either. She just happened to “show” the visible result of her un-Catholic private practices. And isn’t hating the sin but not the sinner a major doctrine of Christianity? There is a danger of great hypocrisy here. After all, it is the “act” of pre or extra marital sex that is being condemned and not the “state of pregnancy”, right? Is it quite clear that none of those who took the decision to fire her, had ever done the same at any time in their lives? Perhaps their actions did not result in pregnancies because they may have used better birth control, or are gay – both un-Catholic practices!
The policy is bad because it opens the door to hiring practices by employers which will allow meddling into the private “legal” habits of
potential employees.
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I would be interested to know the wording of the WHO’s application. The article above makes it sound like the trigger is the leading, and misleadingly vague, question: “Are you a smoker?” (Though, the article is not clear or demonstrably reliable on specifics).
Imagine Candidate One, for whom the answer is “yes,” but the full answer is “I am, but I am trying to quit.” It seems to me that person would be a very good candidate for employment, even in a position directly related to smoking cessation programs. Candidate Two’s answer is, “No”, meaning, “I am not, but I also don’t think tobacco smoking is a serious concern.” Work-place bans and cessation programs won’t make Candidate Two as good a candidate as Candidate One.
The WHO seems to be trying to use the action of smoking as a heuristic to gauge beliefs about smoking relevant to their mission, which they appear to take as stopping people from smoking. Would it be less troubling for them to leave actions alone but make employment contingent on belief? That is, they could have an application that said, “One of our missions is to stop tobacco smoking worldwide. Do you share this mission?” Still seems creepy to me, but at least it would lay the cards on the table. Perhaps the WHO is an inherently paternalistic organization, and just not the place for left-libertarian souls…what place is, these days? (sigh). (It’s quasi-governmental role as an arm of the UN might make this paternalism more problematic, but that’s really off-topic).
Actually, on this last rambling point: why does the WHO consider its job to tell people not to smoke, rather than to educate them on the dangers of smoking, then let them decide? It would be one thing for a state to tell people to stop smoking as part of a program of trying to make universal healthcare feasible, etc. (other situations involving externalities), but that’s not within the WHO’s mandate or control. As an organizational mission, it seems like silly heap of finger wagging.
P.S. I find both arguments in bold font rather weak. That old Hitler saw is brought up to argue against vegetarians (which he, reputedly, was) and who knows what else; it says nothing to me other than that the quality of non-smoking (or vegetarianism) is not sufficient to prove niceguy-ness. I suspect that none of these men, despite excelling in their respective fields, would have been great at convincing people to live healthy lives (if that’s the point of the WHO– it seems they should have better things to worry about, like malnutrition, and AIDS). And, I suspect Hitler’s desire to exterminate large numbers of people, including people with infirmities, would have diqualified him on other grounds.
The second section is not a logical equivalent, since the WHO is requiring people not to do something, rather than to do something. Joe’s Catholic school anecdote is a much closer match.
P.P.S. Ruchira– what took me so long to post is that I’ve been unbelievably busy at work, but found time this week in the Christmas-New Year’s week office activity twilight zone. Might disappear again next week, but I have been reading, and enjoying, your blog. Please keep it up!
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The Hitler analogy is only for dramatic effect to show that an awful lot of competent public health experts might not pass the smoking test. It does not of course mean that non-smokers will be any less competent, as the Hitler vs Einstein example might suggest. Just that WHO will be limiting the pool of applicants to choose from and qualified smokers will be unjustly left out because of a bad, private and legal habit.
The reverse – employers requiring prospective employees to “do” something as opposed to “not do”, is not so much of a stretch for me. If it is required of an employee that he/she live up to an image that is being promoted by an agency in terms of health, morality or public good, what is the difference between not doing something “bad” or doing something “good”? Both are meant to set attractive examples by persuasion. Most of the time we do things in places of employment like fundraisers, charity work etc. School teachers especially have to do many activities in the community commensurate with their job as educators. For the most part, all this comes with the territory and we accept them as part of the job description as long as it does not spill over into what we do in our homes. What Glantz is saying is that excluding applicants on the basis of a “legal” habit, away from the work place, might embolden some employers to require employees to do some things which too will be legal but not wholly wholesome. In both cases, it is an intrusion. Should doctors and nurses who smoke (yes, there are some) also lose their license to practice?
I know Anna, that you guys are all insanely busy. I am just glad so many of you still take the time to read my blog from time to time. It is quite different from Dissemination here since I am doing this solo.
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