Although I'd have a serious problem with actual laws prohibiting their smoking, I can't really get worked up over a company making such a policy. While inconvenient and potentially expensive for many employees, the company is just exercising its right to run the business as they see fit.

If smokers within the company don't like the policy, they are free to work elsewhere.

Roger beat me to it. An important part of the necessary freedoms we protect here is the freedom for private individuals to discriminate however they see fit.

I wonder how long it will be before smokers sue for $75 (say) off on their company pension plan, considering that they aren't going to live so long?

I don't see anything so wrong as asking them to pay more for the premium (they can always not participate or pony up the money - either way).

However, do they also have an higher payment for fat people. If not, than their whole "reason" is just a way of discriminating against smokers.

Bogie,

That's exactly the point. The discriminate against such a small group that most people don't mind. I'm not saying that they don't have a right to do what they're doing. I'm just saying that it's morally wrong.

If someone wants to slowly kill themselves, who am I to stop them. Especially when so many of us are slowly killing ourselves via the myriad of other lifestyle choices we make.

markum made a nice 'gotcha' point. I'm surprised that Roger and others agree that a private employee can discriminate (other than protected classes, of course), especially a huge outfit like Gannet. So, seriously, could Gannet charge extra for gay males (probably not, sexual preference protection) or perhaps anyone who engages in extra marital sex or anal intercourse?
With that said, at least they are just charging extra, and not refusing to hire, as other companies have done. I myself pay smoker's rates on my term life insurance. I really don't have a problem with that because rating risks is what insurance is about. An employee making lifestyle judgments is another thing.

My company doesn't do that. Instead, they offer a $300 discount if you *don't* smoke. Because clearly that's completely different than penalizing those that do.

Also, as an aside, bungie jumping, skydiving etc are often included as "high risk recreational behavior" and prohibited in high-level executives contracts as part of the keyman clause. Not that it justifies this or not, just that is isn't unheard of. "If you want this $15MM a year contract, you have to give up skydiving." Well, it will be tough, but I think I'll give it a go.

Mikem -

There is nothing inherently wrong with discrimination. Society has attached a very negative connotation the the concept, but in reality, we all discriminate in many different aspects of our lives every day. It's all in the name of diversity, I suppose, which itself has taken on an almost religious meaning.

Really, why not allow companies to discriminate however they see fit? As long as we are all free to not be employed by them and/or refuse to patronize them, what's the problem?

If I own a business and want to refuse employment to say, all short people, why shouldn't I be allowed to make such potentially destructive decision if I so desire? Do you really think my business will do well after I limit my supply of labor and word gets out to the public about the policy? I sure don't, which is partly why I wouldn't make such a decision in the first place (the simple morality of the decision is a big factor too).

In this case, if smokers both refused to work for Gannett and refused to support their products, how fast do you think they'd re-evaluate their policy?

My employer does a very similar thing, but simply phrases it differently. Instead of charging everyone $50 for smoking, we get a $150 bonus to spend on our benefits package if we don't smoke (they pay less for my health insurance and so they passed the savings on to me). I used it to pay for dental and vision coverage for my family.

Works rather well.

Roger: You make a seemingly logical point. But obviously no one, including yourself I'm sure, believes that the general logic you use to defend Gannet's policy can actually be defended. For example, your logic would allow racial discrimination of the most obvious type (no blacks need apply) because market forces would eventually punish such a hiring policy through various ways. Please don't be offended. I'm sure you would not want to see such a thing occur, but your logic would certainly not see a need for laws to interfere.
Remember that civil rights law, with the numerous protected classes we have added, depend on society judging that discrimination of certain groups is wrong. So it belies your logic rather than simply taking up the slack where market forces fail to protect.

Mikem,

Absolutely no offense taken.

I must be missing something, though. If civil rights law depends on "society judging that discrimination of certain groups is wrong", then the mere existence of these laws demonstrates that society, as a whole, believes that such discrimination is wrong.

I agree with you here, which is precisely why I believe that employers should be able to discriminate as they see fit - society, via the free market, will punish or reward them accordingly. I fail to see the "slack", which requires laws to protect certain classes from society, since society ultimately creates those very laws.

Let's say I own The Honky Manufacturing Company, and I refuse to hire anyone other than white people. Shouldn't I have have the opportunity to make that decision (and likely kill my own business)? If I was that blatently racist and incredibly dumb, do we really need more laws to prevent my stupidity? In this case, I'd be gone soon enough anyhow, and with less governmental paperwork.

Civil rights laws didn't change people's opinions about minority rights -- people's opinions about minority rights changed civil rights laws.

If this weren't true, our modern civil rights laws would never have been enacted. This makes many laws simply redundant statements of the general public opinion.

A few years ago GANNET NEWS SERVICES admited to posing gang members holding guns these journalists are a bunch of scoundrels

Great Libertarian Bigot Neal Boortz cordially approves of this: he just assumes smokers cost more to insure than non-smokers, ignoring the fact that if the pure darlings really do live longer their lifetime bill for medical treatment will be greater.

If fairness in medical expenditure were truly the issue, then those of healthy habits would be charged more. Nothing like being ruled by liars.

Mikem: The original point of the civil rights laws was that different parts of the country had different majority opinions about minority rights - and the laws imposed the views of the majority upon the less populous section (the south). (At least, the 1964 law wasn't quite as drastic an imposition of majority rule as the Civil War and Reconstruction.) Of course, there were northerners who didn't agree with this also - and like Prohibition, no doubt there were quite a few people who supported the law but weren't entirely willing to abide by it...