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But, But… It’s For Your Own Good!

27 comments

Nicotine tests could cost Volusia County medics their jobs.

Volusia County is taking over ambulance services and the anti-smoking policy of county employees could cost some ambulance crew members and paramedics their jobs.

Ambulance employees are currently allowed to smoke if they were hired before the anti-smoking policy took effect earlier this year, but now that those employees will become county workers, all of them will have to pass nicotine tests to keep their jobs.

…

Volusia County's administration said the policy is a health issue and they do not want taxpayers to pay for expensive health care costs of county employees who smoke. County officials said they also believe they are not invading anyone's privacy.

"When you work for a public agency there really is no such thing as invasion of privacy. They work for the public you know and that's part of the price," Dave Byron of Volusia County said.

(bold emphasis mine)

"Just dial up the heat under the kettle boys, looks like these frogs still think it's a hot tub!"

Ah, the petty tyrannies of local governments and the creep of incrementalism. I think what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Statistically, you're much more likely to contract HIV if you have unprotected anal sex with gay Haitian IV heroin abusers. So why don't we require ol' Dave Byron to submit to HIV and STD testing, monthly drug testing, and tap his phones to see if knows any gays or Haitians? After all, he's a public servant, too. Why should he have any expectation of privacy?

I could say a lot of things here, but someone else said it best:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.  ~ C.S. Lewis

How about something more sensible and less Big Brotherish, like requiring their employees who smoke to contribute a higher percentage to their health insurance premiums?

Naaaaah, that'd never work!

 

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Posted by on August 19, 2011 • Filed under: EMS Health & Safety, The "They Think We're Stupid" Files
  • http://www.facebook.com/sandro.rettinger Sandro Rettinger

    I have to admit, my sympathy is minimal.  Person wants to get paid with tax dollars, the taxpayer has a right to minimize that cost.

  • http://profiles.google.com/erniemedic Ernie Sharp

    That isn’t what is happening. In the rush to be a cool kid in the TEA party, many people are screaming for cuts to public employee benefits and pay. Public employees are being treated poorly in Florida, all in the name of demonizing them for claimed savings.

    From a practical standpoint, any savings are illusory. What is happening is that there is a mass exodus of good medics from the system. Medics are leaving the state or leaving the profession. They are being replaced with medics of less skill and education. Why can’t the TEA party understand that the law of supply and demand applies when the government buys a service, just like it does when the private sector buys a service? The fact is that you aren’t getting the same service for less money, you are accepting a lower level of service.

    From a moral standpoint, you are attempting to claim that people who receive a government paycheck have no rights. What really sucks about being a medic in this state is hearing all about how your pay and benefits are killing the taxpayer, and then you find yourself hauling a person to the hospital. There is a big screen HDTV in the living room, the patient has an iPhone, and there are three cars in the driveway, then the patient hands you a medicaid card.

  • Anonymous

    So where do you draw the line, Sandro? Outlaw motorcycling? What about other risky pursuits? Do we start testing Medicaid recipients for nicotine? Do we retroactively deny Medicare benefits to elderly patients who suffer the long-term effects of smoking?
    And what about the county administrator’s assertion that public employees have no right to privacy? Would you feel comfortable working for someone with that mindset?
    Again, it’s a relatively simple thing to require the smokers to contribute a larger percentage of their insurance premiums. Heck most insurers alreadydo that. That is how the system mitigates the risk. Banning a legal behavior just goes way too damned far.

    Ambulance Driver

    ________________________________

  • PJ

    I confess, I think it’s reasonable for a government agency (or any private employer) to refuse to hire smokers. It’s a market decision…if an employer feels he can discriminate against smokers and still staff his business, then that’s his prerogative. Smoking has many more incidental costs to an employer than just insurance. I haven’t made that decision myself, but I’ve considered it from time to time, and if given equally qualified candidates, I would hire the non-smoker, every time.

    However, applying that prohibition retroactively to existing employees (or to employees “inherited” in such a transaction as is described here) is wrong. Offer classes, bonuses, etc. to stop smoking, sure. But fire someone under a new policy with which it is impossible for the employee to comply immediately (if at all)? Nope…can’t agree with that.

    And Byron’s idiotic statements regarding a right to privacy are just that…idiotic, uninformed statements. It WOULD be kind of amusing for someone to publish his PHI based on that statement, though.

  • AC

    Funny how the left is sOOOO anti smoking unless it’s pot. I guess they don’t want people dying from cancer but terminally stupid is just fine.

  • http://twitter.com/JazzNeurotic Elias Rostad

    This just makes me more confident in my decision not to look for jobs that are associated with a count/city and stay in the more private ambulance service or hospital funded services. I’m not a smoker, but i do enjoy a cigar from time to time ’cause i’m an adult and i’m allowed.

    Anywho, i figure having places slowly crossed off the list, i oughta be able to find a job after school *cross fingers*

  • Nick

    I am more of a ‘readbutdon’treply’ kind of person, but this one certainly got my nicotine-laden blood flowing.  It seems to me that Volusia County has now decided to intrude into the off-duty lives of their employees.  My employer does not allow tobacco use while on duty, or even in their uniform for that matter.  And they are allowed to do that, because, well, it’s THEIR uniform.  What I decide to do with or to my body once I take their uniform off, and leave their property is none of their business whatsoever, as long as my actions are legal. 

    I am certainly not a lawyer (yet), but I can’t see how this could possibly pass a Constitutional muster.  What employees do in their private lives, unless it impacts their performance, is non of the employer’s business.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mikael-Hallin/100001043431563 Mikael Hallin

    “When you work for a public agency there really is no such thing as invasion of privacy. They work for the public you know and that’s part of the price,” Dave Byron of Volusia County said.
    Die in a fire.

    Also, anyone else considered the implication that employees that wanted to quit, but need some help, like nicotine patches or gum, would also get busted by the tests, even if they weren’t smoking anymore?

  • http://www.facebook.com/sandro.rettinger Sandro Rettinger

     *grin*  I’m an anarchist.  I don’t draw the line.  Taxation is theft.  So, yes, if the people being stolen from want to limit the cost they are seeing, they absolutely have the right to demand that their employees be complete straight edge, warm-milk drinking, sweater vest wearing, Mr. Rogers clones, they can put that in the employment contracts.  If you want the job, you follow the job’s rules.  If you find working for a company led by the mob rule of democracy to be untenable, work somewhere else.  No one is forcing those people to continue working for that agency.

    And what about the county administrator’s assertion that public
    employees have no right to privacy? Would you feel comfortable working
    for someone with that mindset?

    No, I wouldn’t.  And so, I wouldn’t.

  • http://www.facebook.com/sandro.rettinger Sandro Rettinger

    From a moral standpoint, you are attempting to claim that people who receive a government paycheck have no rights.

    That is in fact not true.  I am saying that people who receive a government paycheck have precisely the same rights as anybody else.  But no one has a right to a job.  You only have the right to contract freely between yourself and potential employers.  Unfortunately for public employees, their employer is the taxpayer.

  • Anonymous

    Fair enough.

    My biggest beef is that these guys didn’tsign on knowing the score. They were already working there, and when taken over by the county, had the policy retroactively applied to them. And like someone else pointed out, what about nicotine patches? They could be trying to quit, and the test won’t differentiate.

    Ambulance Driver

    ________________________________

  • http://www.facebook.com/sandro.rettinger Sandro Rettinger

     Well, hopefully the county will apply some level of sanity to the tests, just like they would to a test for illicit drugs.  If you can throw out a scrip for vicodin, and show you had surgery a week ago, the opiate positive reading on your random screen is likely to be taken under advisement.  Likewise, if you show your arm with the nic patch on it, and say “hey, I’m quitting to comply with your policy”, hopefully they’ll be sane about that.  (No guarantees, of course, this is a government agency we’re talking about.)

    As for getting rule changes on acquisition, that happens in the private sector too.  As a programmer who was involved in the dot-com bubble, I saw a number of places that had very, very lax dress code policies, or time-shifting policies, that got positively straight-jacket when the startup in question got bought by a “real company”.  Most hackers object to going from “You can come to work in jeans and a t-shirt, and work from noon to ten as long as you’re getting your work done” to “you have to wear a shirt and tie and be here at 0800 on the dot” in one fell swoop.  Some of them accepted the new rules, and stayed.  Some of them found them too onerous, and left.

    It’s a bummer, but it’s the other Golden Rule.  “He who has the gold makes the rules.”  The guy signing one’s paychecks has power.  There’s really no way around that, short of going to a system where everyone is guaranteed a job, no matter what.  But I haven’t particularly liked the results of the experiments along those lines that have been run in the past.

  • Anonymous

    The quote sort of implies that other county employees are subject to nicotine testing.  Does that include senior administrators? Or are they — as usual — exempt from the regulations they promulgate for everyone else?

    As a former smoker, I’m of two minds about things like this.  Yes, quitting saves money (especially for the smoker who no longer shells out $7.00 or $8.00 a pack here in Maine), but I also think maybe the government is sticking its nose too far into people’s business.

  • Anonymous

    What REALLY confuses me is that I seemed to be in better health when I was smoking.  Now?  One problem after another.  Been thinking about starting again, see if my health improves.

  • oldtat

    Hey, let us fire all the fat people and those who eat steak & pizza… really, whats next?

  • me

    If they are doing this for so called health reasons then what about someone that is over weight? That is just as unhealthy as smoking, but it is currently politicaly incorrect to mention someones weight. 

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_G5L26CEVH3NXBECWHMY5HA7JLU R

    From what I ahve read about the TEA party, they want less government intrusion into the public daily workings, not more.  So blaming a party that does not want government intrusion for initiating government intrusion is kind of backward.  How do people get away with blaming the conservatives for bowing down to tobacco companies and then blame them for a law like this? I wouldnt necessarily dismiss new medics as having less education, either.  Twenty years ago a medic was not required to know the inner chemical workings of the body and cells.  They saw a symptom and treated it per protocol, and not challenging if it was best for the patient.  The new medics might not have the experience but I would rather have a 45 year old doctor than a 75 year old one.  The older one may have more experience but may also be using outdated methods.

  • Eprice22

    Private employers have the right to demand just about anything they like of their applicants. Religion, sexual preference, or even their favorite bedtime snack. No, it’s not legal but they get by. Someday pot will be legal but you don’t want train engineers to be stoned on the job. Trouble is, pot can be detected for 6 weeks after. It doesn’t mean you are stoned at that moment and there is no equivelant to a breatholizer for alcohol that can be duplicated to see how stoned you are. There are behavioural tests but they are by nature anecdotal. I guess I just made this too complicated. Sorry.

  • Bryon

    Why not say its just my nicotine gum?

  • Atk

    Where does it end?  As previously noted they could also go after burger eaters.  As an ex-smoker of a mere 5 months these draconian policies are not new to me.  Cholesterol high?  beat it.  Got a speeding ticket?  beat it, you are a risk.  Seen at a bar off duty?  beat it alky.  Bad credit?  beat it, you could be stealing stuff.  Not a church member?  beat it, you have no moral compass.  ’tis a slippery slope

  • Cesar Rosas

    Sandro you’re an idiot. Just because you work for “the people” does not mean they own you. Unless the agency wants to pay their employees 24 hours a day they cannot dictate their off duty behavior unless it’s illegal. And the whole “you don’t have a right to have a job” is bullshit. An employer can terminate for poor performance or illegal activity but not for someone’s health choice.

  • Anonymous

    Tweet!

    Personal foul, unsportsmanlike conduct! Fifteen yards!

    No name-calling or personal attacks in the comments, please.

    Disagree and debate as vigorously as you want, but keep it civil.

  • http://davestuff.wordpress.com diamond dave

    Trouble is, the frogs are already well boiled and now they just do the backstroke in the pot.  Nobody ever tried to challenge any of the previous policies of the anti-smoking crusade, and they’ve just gotten bolder.  Now the fight will be tougher, if anyone cares to fight back.

    I do believe that a determined lawyer might be able to prove that a public sector employer has no right to dictate the private activities of an employee while off duty, provided such activities are legal and don’t project a negative image on their profession.  But the frogs would have to stop swimming in their hot tubs long enough to fight back. 

    Now they can dictate no nicotine use while on duty (including breaks), and balk at hiring smokers.  But it’s only a matter of time before they try to dictate something else that infringes on their employees’ freedoms off duty.  It’s a slippery slope of control that’s only going to get worse.

  • Dave

    My biggest beef is that these guys didn’tsign on knowing the score.
    They were already working there, and when taken over by the county, had
    the policy retroactively applied to them.

    It’s happened several times at my private-sector employer.  Pay cuts, changes to job duties, benefit cuts (and cost increases–especially to us fat guys, and that takes longer to change than quitting smoking).  Am I happy about it?  Hell no.  But the job belongs to the employer, not to me, so I meet the terms.  And look for other options.

  • Geekasaurus

    My friend AD

    This is the deal about us Republics………..the government works for the citizens, If the citizens all want manhole covers of 24k gold, then the government will purchase 24k gold manhole covers.  The constitution does limit the powers of the government, but there is no part there that says a person has a right to smoke.

    There is no part (yet) saying that insurance is a right or that the taxypayers must [ahem] cough up the bucks to purchase insurance for government employees.  All this is part of the voluntary social compact and NOT a right. 

    The government probably got a deal on cheaper insurance for non-smokers.  The decision-makers acted in the fiduciary best interests of the taxpayers to purchase it–as the taxpayers wanted them to.

    Its a lose-lose proposition for the nicotine-addicted.  It would be appropriate for the County to offer a generous severance package and out-placement services for the affected people.  But those are not a ‘right’ either; just the right thing to do.

  • Anonymous

    Then an appropriate response to uphold that fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers would have been to either charge the smokers premiums high enough to offset their anticipated increased costs, or deny them health coverage altogether, rather than fire them for engaging in legal behaviors on their own time.
    Then again, this is Volusia County EMS we’re talking about. They have a history of overkill when it comes to making policy.

    Ambulance Driver

    ________________________________

  • http://www.facebook.com/sandro.rettinger Sandro Rettinger

    I might be an idiot, it’s true.  Not that you’ve offered any evidence that I am, other than sticking your
    tongue out at me and making a noise like a 5 year old on the playground
    going “NUH-UNNH!” in stern negation.  But those are pretty strong words from someone with a reading comprehension problem like the one you seem to be demonstrating here, seeing as how I’ve explicitly disavowed the position you claim I make.  If I thought that public employees were owned by the state (which would
    be a pretty ironic position for an anarchist to hold) I’d not have said
    they had the right to quit if they didn’t like the rules imposed by the
    job.  On the contrary, I state that no man can be rightfully held as a
    slave.  I cannot force anyone to work for me, only offer them money to do my work.  If the conditions I attach to the job are unbecoming, anyone is free to simply not work for me.

    And I stand by my claim that no one has a right to a job.  Anything else is just communist / socialist drivel.  It may happen to be the law of the land as it stands, but it’s still crap.

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