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Dec. 11, 2005 The figures are indisputable. Tobacco contributes to over 400,000 deaths each year in the United States. Health Insurance companies are raising their rates to smokers and offering incentives to those who don’t smoke. Scott’s (of Scott’s Turf Builder fame) is going “smoke free” in order to keep health insurance costs down. Various “wellness” programs are being offered by businesses all over the U.S.A. to attempt to improve the health of their workers and to lower insurance costs. I know of one such program. If you join the wellness program your insurance rate will stay the same. If not, your rate will triple. To join you must submit to blood pressure readings, cholesterol check, body mass checks, and weight and height checks. Also, you must be a confirmed nonsmoker with the implied threat of blood tests to prove you are a nonsmoker over the following year after you have joined. After one year of membership you will be subjected to the same tests. If you have made improvement in at least one of those areas of concern, your insurance rate will remain low. If you put this whole idea in perspective, it makes sense, right? I’m not so sure. If you happen to stand four-eleven inches and weigh five hundred pounds when you start the program and you lose one pound, you have made improvement. If your bad cholesterol number is over four hundred and you happen to lower it to three-ninety-nine, you have made improvement. Hmm, something’s wrong here. If you smoke and all of your readings are fantastic, you’re not even considered for the program. You may say, “smokers have the highest mortality rate of all preventable diseases." You would be exactly right, except, if you total all obesity related deaths, alcohol and drug related deaths, and HIV related deaths, smoking would come in second. I have yet to see alcoholics banned from “wellness” programs, heavy people, or sexually promiscuous people. Yes, I am a smoker and I admit to it. I am also aware of what smoking can do to someone. It’s an addiction, but so is over-eating and drinking. Meth, heroin, and cocaine are also addictions. I have accepted the fact that I am a health risk, but I don’t believe I am more of a health risk than the heavy man walking around with a heart the size of Boston trying to pump blood to forty-five million miles of veins.
Most businesses have become smoke-free which is great as far as I’m concerned. If you smoked, you had to stand outside in the snow, sleet, hail, tornadoes, and freezing temperatures anyway...so big deal. Make the world smoke-free and I’ll just be a lawbreaker smoking in my basement at home. Soon, and we’re near that stereotype now, smokers will be viewed as the lowest form of life on the planet. Amoebas get more respect than smokers. But, I say unto you, let he who casts the first stone be without sin, or tobacco.
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