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Originally posted by

Jen

No one is arguing that smoking is a good thing for people to do, Robin; merely that it should not be the deciding factor when hiring. And I'm not sure I follow your argument about other addictions...do you suggest that hiring should be contingent upon the absence of alcohol use, gambling, and promiscuous sex? Where does it end? Should nurses be tested for fast food consumption (if such a thing were possible)? Should they be required to attend the gym? People do unhealthy things, nurses included. These habits (including addictions) should really only be a factor in hiring if the habit prevents the person from satisfactorily performing his/her job.

It would be a wonderful thing if no one smoked, and I hope we eventually see that day...it is an addiction. However, I fail to see how smoking interferes with a nurse's ability to do the job, and I find it frightening that our culture has become so paternalistic.

PS I'm not a smoker, so I'm not saying this out of fear that someone will take my smokes away. :)

Howdy ma'am!

If your "smoking nurse" were totally responsible for any health care costs incurred from his/her habit I would agree with you...everyone, especially an employer, could "butt out"! Ouch!

Ummm...unfortunately, ours is not a libertarian society, m'Lady...no Thoreaus/Walden Ponds here, eh?

rl

Originally posted by

JM

Figures you'd be quick to jumping to pulling the "socialist/ libertarian" card.

Hello JM, if that's your real name - ha!

Is the "socialist/libertarian card" you seem to denigrate not the crux of this debate? At what point of the societal spectrum do we want our society to fall? The most personal responsibility (Libertarian = less government) or the most governmental responsibility (Socialism = cradle to grave care by the government i.e. socialized medicine) and I couldn't even fathom how a "fascist" government might handle this situation. Ummm, I thought one might substitute "big business" for government in this instance; am I assuming too much? A society is formed by various individuals determining they have common interests. Just as I would seek to aid someone who had never smoked if they were afflicted with lung cancer, I would also seek to aid the poor smuck who smoked cigarettes because they were addicted to nicotine and contracted lung cancer! The question is...just how does our society determine to do this?

Perhaps we need to establish a definition of "Big Brother" first, eh? Or even "societal responsibility". In our capitalistic economic model, a business will always be looking to it's bottom line as it's fiduciary responsibility to it's share holders or owners. They can, however, be made to shoulder more "societal responsibility" due to the fact that they make their profit from our society, but should they be made to shoulder the potential burden of our mistakes?

Things that make me go hmmm.

Originally posted by

Vera

I was curious, does anyone know how long nicotine even stays in your blood system to be detected by a test?

Hello Vera;

I'd offer this bit of easily gleaned research from the online reference, Wikipedia, as an initial response to your question:

Nicotine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pharmacokinetics

As nicotine enters the body, it is distributed quickly through the bloodstream and can cross the blood-brain barrier. On average it takes about seven seconds for the substance to reach the brain when inhaled. The half life of nicotine in the body is around two hours[2]. The amount of nicotine inhaled with tobacco smoke is a fraction of the amount contained in the tobacco leaves (most of the substance is destroyed by the heat). The amount of nicotine absorbed by the body from smoking depends on many factors, including the type of tobacco, whether the smoke is inhaled, and whether a filter is used. For chewing tobacco, dipping tobacco and snuff, which are held in the mouth between the lip and gum, or taken in the nose, the amount released into the body tends to be much greater than smoked tobacco. Nicotine is metabolized in the liver by cytochrome P450 enzymes (mostly CYP2A6, and also by CYP2B6). A major metabolite is cotinine.