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South Florida businesses and nonprofits are pushing their employees to stop smoking and lead healthier lives with the goal ofcontrolling ballooning health care costs and increasing productivity.

Fargo, West Fargo,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Grand Forks, Bismarck,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Devils Lake and Napoleon have gone beyond the state law and approved local ordinances that ban smoking in bars. The Devils Lake measure is to take effect July 1, and Bismarck’s ordinance has been put on hold until it is resolved by a citywide vote. After Bismarck’s City Commission approved two ordinances on smoking in bars, a group of bar employees circulated referendum petitions to put them on the ballot.
This “quit or die” approach is hard to defend. Even with nicotine replacement therapy such as gum or the patch, fewer than 15 percent of people trying to quit manage to remain off cigarettes for as long as six months.[link widoczny dla zalogowanych].
The best argument puritanical activists and government regulators make is that tobacco companies aren’t trying to get people to switch; rather, they are trying to keep smokers addicted by training them to use smokeless tobacco in areas where smoking isn’t allowed.
But this so-called “dual use” argument is dubious. The reason companies haven’t been more persuasively encouraging smokers to switch to smokeless is because it would be against the new [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] law. Tobacco companies are forbidden from telling consumers a simple, critical, and undeniable fact: Smokeless tobacco is not as harmful as cigarette smoking.
But now, at least one tobacco company is taking the “switch” argument directly to smokers who want to quit smoking. In (what shouldn’t actually be) provocative new ads, Reynolds America’s “Smoke-Free Resolution” campaign,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the company is telling smokers they can quit smoking by using snus. The ads ignore the best argument to switch, which is that the product is less likely to kill you. And for that, we have the government and the “health” activists to blame.[link widoczny dla zalogowanych].
The best thing for smokers to do is to quit tobacco completely. But the multitudes who have tried and failed should not despair. They should tell the nanny-staters to “butt out” so they can realistically resolve to quit smoking, this time with the help of less harmful approaches such as E-cigarettes and snus.
Palm Beach County’s MorseLife is the latest organization to join the trend, offering Weight Watchers, yoga classes to reduce stress and a new midweek green market, where employees are encouraged to shop for the ingredients to make a healthful dinner instead of hitting the drive-through.[link widoczny dla zalogowanych].
But along with the carrot is a big stick: Starting in January, employees will be prohibited from smoking on campus. Other companies have taken an even harder line on healthy living. At Hedrick Brothers Construction in West Palm Beach,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], employees who smoke or are considered obese, based on their body mass index, pay more for insurance.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimates that each smoker costs an employer about $3,400 annually in higher health care bills, reduced productivity and increased absenteeism. While moves by employers to stamp out smoking may be unpopular with some employees, they are perfectly legal. The American Civil Liberties Union opposes measures that cost smokers more or dictate what they can or cannot do in their off hours. But the organization has had little success in controlling what some see as the hand of Big Brother.