Our View - Thursday

Let's reward nonsmokers
Hospitals pay employees to quit

Today's hospitals resemble addictions clinics - only the patients are the doctors, nurses and other employees who work there. All over the country, hospital employees are in addiction and weight- counseling. They're on cigarette drugs, sucking on lollipops in collective efforts to meet new nonsmoking policies.

Most recently, employees at Colorado Springs' Penrose-St. Francis Health System have been told not to smoke. They're in company with employees at nearby Memorial Health System, nine Denver-area hospitals that will go smoke free Friday, and about 600 hospitals nationwide that have already gone completely tobacco free. Very quickly, expect no hospitals anywhere to allow smoking.

The smoking ban makes good sense, and a hospital is well-within its rights to decide that it wants to employ only non-smokers. Hospitals are places of health and healing. They are businesses where doctors and nurses see daily the illnesses caused by smoking.

Orthopedic surgeons know that patients can't heal properly from surgeries if they smoke. Oncologists know that smokers get cancer. Respiratory therapists have seen patients who can barely breathe, sick from emphysema, begging for just one more cigarette.

Smoking clearly doesn't jibe with the healing culture of a hospital. Some even argue that second-hand cigarette pollution, in hair and on the clothes of smokers, can be unhealthy for some patients.

Regardless of pro and con arguments regarding cigarettes, most hospitals - including Penrose-St. Francis - operate on private property. The owners of that property have every right to exclude those who smell of cigarettes, for any reason they choose. Their right to do this has nothing in common with the outrageous mandates by some state and local governments that force private business owners to ban smoking.

The Penrose-St. Francis policy, similar to the Memorial rule, prohibits smoking on any Penrose property. Employees are forbidden from coming back from breaks, even if taken ofi of the property, smelling like smoke. Smokers who are suspected of violating the policy three times may be fired.

Most hospitals aren't heartless when telling smokers to quit. In fact, they're so zealous in their efforts to wean employees from nicotine that it sometimes appears as a celebration of recovering addicts. Penrose-St. Francis, for example, has offered free and low-cost counseling. It also will ofier counseling by a dietician for quitters who gain weight. The smoking-cessation drug Chantix will be available to employees at an $80 subsidized discount. The hospital has ordered 250 "quit kits," and lollipops and mints will be abundant and free throughout the facilities.

If all that fanfare isn't enough, employees who quit for six months will each receive a $50 gift certificate.

And that's where it goes a bit over the top. The hospital has every right to reward quitters however management sees fit. But where's the wisdom in paying someone to quit a behavior that was believed counterproductive to the mission of the business? Instead, the hospital's administration should consider major bonuses for all the employees who haven't smoked during years of service. Those employees, after all, haven't contributed to the problem in need of an expensive cure. They are the employees who haven't caused the expense of mass counseling, weight loss therapy, subsidized withdrawal drugs, and the mass dispensing of lollipops and mints. They're the employees who didn't take hourly breaks for a fix.

It's great for a company to ban cigarette smoke and cigarette smells from its property. Understandably, the company should take reasonable measures to help employees comply. But all those hospitals banning smoking should be careful not to dismiss the value provided by employees who don't have to quit. If not smoking for only six months is worth $50, what's the value of not smoking ever? It's substantial, for sure.

As the lifelong non-smokers won't be using the discounted drugs, the counseling, the dietician or the quit kits, it would be difficult to compensate them on par with their colleagues who are kicking the habit. At the very least, however, non-smokers deserve $50 gift cards. Again, that's the very least these hospitals should do. An earnest gesture of parity might be something like an immediate bonus of $500 cash. It seems a small price, if the value of a smoke-free workforce is really all they say.

Massage law to keep us safe

Thanks to a law that took effect July 1, we'll all finally be safe from an immediate threat to the public health, safety and peace. We'll be safe from massage therapists. But don't get too comfortable yet. The law will keep us safe by requiring massage therapists to meet training guidelines and obtain licenses from the state. Though the law technically kicked in July 1, registration won't begin until next April.

Ari Armstrong, publisher of Colorado-based FreeColorado.com, points out the absurdity of a new law requiring the licensure of anyone doing business as a "massage therapist," "registered massage therapist," "massage practitioner," "masseuse," "masseur," the letters "M.T.", "R.M.T." or any other terms that indicate a person gives rubs for a living. The new law tells us that registration "is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, and safety."

Who could believe such nonsense? The Grand Junction Free Press, which Armstrong writes for, quoted Marilyn Veselack, owner of the Institute of Therapeutic Massage. She's a member of the Colorado Coalition of Massage Therapists, a clique of masseurs who consider themselves better trained and educated than their competitors. Massage is something one can learn by doing, or by doing and reading about, or by doing as an apprentice. The coalition has lobbied years for the law, which Veselack says will give her and her colleagues "respect." She and her colleagues are people who paid thousands to learn the trade, and charge thousands to teach it.

Wrote Armstrong: "They've got ‘respect' alright. Now some of their competitors can be thrown in jail... ."

One way to get a state license, and therefore "respect," is to go to a massage school approved by the coalition. "Coincidentally, Veselack owns just such a school," Armstrong wrote. It charges up to $9,000 tuition.

When Armstrong forced Veselack to explain how she could promote a law that outlaws much of her competition, she said it was a matter of safety. She pointed to Colorado Springs, telling Armstrong that Springs cops would explain the human trafficking and other horrific crimes this massage law was intended to resolve. But City Attorney Will Bain had never heard about the law. A Grand Junction police officer said massage is "not something we've been getting calls on."

And no, the law won't eliminate prostitution disguised as massage. Legitimate massage businesses have always been easy to distinguish from sex-oriented massage businesses, which boldly advertise sex.

The new law favors some masseurs over others, granting them easy lives of reduced competition. It favors masseurs with purchased pedigrees, eliminating competitors who may be better and more reputable.

All to keep us safe.