On Monday, Sarasota County, Florida instituted a tobacco-free hiring policy for all new job applicants. The policy requires everyone applying for a job with the county to acknowledge that they have not smoked in the last 12 months.

All applicants will be screened for tobacco use during a new-hire physical exam to determine if they have been using tobacco products and if they have, they will not be hired.

The astoundingly overbearing policy is an attempt to combat the billions of dollars in health-related costs and work productivity losses caused by smoking.  But as one blogger from Quiz Law noted: "You know what else causes 'billions in health-related economic losses and a drain on productivity?' Fat people. Why doesn’t Sarasota County prohibit employees from eating fast food, then?"

We couldn't agree more.  Why target smokers when obesity and heart disease are the nation's top killers? Let employees be tested for the presence of bacon and fried chicken in their bloodstream.  If detected, they should be sent back to the KFC from which they came. 

Of course, we jest.  While it's easy to understand the goal of this pseudo-fascist policy, the same end could be achieved by hiring smokers with the caveat they must quit smoking within six months of employment.  The county could pay for them to go through a smoking-cessation program, test them for nicotine use, and if they didn't come out clean, they could just stop paying their health insurance.  There's no need to prevent a person from making a living when a small measure like removing health insurance provides enough of an incentive.

Alternatively, instead of removing health insurance, the county could have the individual pay a higher health insurance rate that's in line with their elevated risk for health problems associated with smoking.  If the new hire wants to save some money, they could quit smoking through the program offered by the county paid for by the extra health insurance premium.

Naturally, if you take the view that a person has a right to do whatever he/she wants with his/her own body, then all of the proposals above would seem ludicrous. Within this looking glass, smokers who refrain from blowing smoke around other people seem to only be hurting themselves.  But the reality is, many of them end up on government-paid health insurance programs.  Others simply rack up medical expenses, the burden of which is distributed to others paying into that health insurance system. So like the butterfly effect, if a smoker takes a puff in Connecticut, someone in smoke-free California pays for it.