Nevada law would allow smokers to be discriminated against
By Andrew Doughman, Las Vegas Sun
CARSON CITY — A smoking habit could cost you a job opportunity at a hospital or other medical facility under legislation proposed by state Sen. Joe Hardy, R-Boulder City.
It’s currently illegal for an employer to discriminate against employees who use a product — such as tobacco — outside of work that does not affect job performance or the safety of other employees. Hardy’s measure, Senate Bill 87, would repeal that law.
“It would appear that this would allow an employer to not hire an employee who smokes or drinks,” the Nevada Taxpayer’s Association said in a recent newsletter.
At a legislative hearing Wednesday, Hardy introduced an amendment that would allow hospitals, nursing homes, hospice, home health and other medical facilities to specifically factor someone’s smoking habit into hiring decisions made after June 30.
Under the amendment, other employers would remain prohibited from basing decisions on an employee’s smoking habit.
“The theory is that when you’re in the hospital, you don’t want someone next to you who is smoking while you’re sick,” said Hardy, who is one of two physicians in the Legislature. (The other is Assemblyman Andy Eisen.) “Patients who smell smoke many times have problems with the reaction to it.”
Renown Health, a Nevada-based health care company, is working with Hardy on the bill. The company wants to factor smoking into its future hiring decisions but does not want any current employee to be fired for smoking, said Fred Hillerby, lobbyist for Renown.
“We just want to be able, if we choose, to not hire smokers,” he said. “We think it’s better for the health of our employees and our patients.”
Smoking cigarettes at home or outside during a break may be the personal choice of an employee, but being exposed to the lingering odor of cigarette smoke clinging to a medical employee’s clothing is not a choice for the sick and injured.
“It is their personal decision,” Hardy said. “It’s also a personal decision to quit smoking or risk some adverse employment activity.”
The comfort of the patient may be a noble idea, but it’s also now tied to payments hospitals receive from the federal government.
Under the Affordable Care Act, how patients score a hospital on such measurements as communication with nurses and doctors, cleanliness and quietness of the hospital environment factor into federal reimbursements paid to hospitals.
Hillerby, however, said “that was not the reason we started down this path.”
a patient’s reaction to smoke is more than a “comfort issue” – can you discriminate agaist smokers? nicotene addicts? hardly sounds like a protected class of individuals to me –
Lying in a hospital bed, not feeling well & trying to heal then being exposed to the tobacco cloud that surrounds a smoker is not acceptable.
Smokers don’t believe that others can tell they smoke, after all their last cigarette was outside, 5 or 10 minutes ago – wrong.
How people in the health field can smoke is a mystery that defies logic & intelligence. Addictions have little to do with logic or intelligence, never the less, tobacco addicts are unacceptable for hospital employment.
Cigs are as bad as pot ,they both are discriminate against,so everyone just have to deal with it,and the employer could be the best for a company could ever have in some cases.
Employers also discriminate against older workers as well as over weight people,just a fact of life that beautiful people get more breaks than the normal looks people do.
What gets me in this town is college degree people having to work for unskilled jobs like Heavenly.
Liz Campbell is now on oxygen 24/7. She is 77 years old. Over the years she would stop and start smoking.
Anything to deter smoking is a plus for that individual hooked on smoking. Of course no one is hooked, they can stop anytime, yeah right.
Hardy a Republican for regulation, must have a very good reason for his Bill 87.
cigarette smoke first or second hand is one of the most disgusting things that a person can choose to do to themselves and every one around them. I think they should be completely eliminated from any place that is public. If someone has to suck on a cigarette it should be in their own home away from everyone else. They are disgusting
Let me get this straight… people like me who have an asthma attack when a person who has just smoked even walks into a room with me are NOT “discriminated against”? This article is obviously written and paid for by another whore for the tobacco industry. I suppose cocaine addicts, alcoholics, heroin addicts and other drug addicts (not just nicotine addicts) are also being “discriminated against” since they are not allowed to use their drug of choice on the job? Especially when caring for people like me who are already sick from being exposed to toxic secondhand tobacco smoke?! Tobacco KILLS over 63,000 NON-smokers each year. Not having nicotine addicts exposing people who are already sick to the 63 known cancer causing carcinogens, 4,000 to 8,000 deadly chemicals, and 619 additives which they off-gass for hours after smoking should be a no-brainer! If a “comfort issue” includes MY right to breath clean, unpolluted TOXIC air vs an employee’s right to off-gas toxic chemicals because of a drug addiction that makes heroin and cocaine look like a walk in the park in comparison, I think the answer is clear. I say, RECALL TOBACCO and make it as illegal as all other toxic addictive drugs! After all, tobacco KILLS when used as intended. Furthermore, it is 6 times more addictive than cocaine and heroin COMBINED. And why should I have to pay over $250 for an inhaler when the people who force me to use it (people SMOKING!!!) only pay $5.00 for an entire package of ADDICTIVE miniature toxic waste dumps??? I dream of a world where the tobacco industry is held accountable for every single one of the people they murder…. 6 million nicotine addicts and another 600,000 from secondhand smoke worldwide last year alone! And that doesn’t even cover the thousands of people who die in cigarette caused fires each year.