Freakonomics Radio - 123. Help Wanted. No Smokers Need Apply

Episode Date: April 17, 2013

In many states, it is perfectly legal to not hire someone who smokes. Should employers also be able to weed out junk-food lovers or motorcyclists -- or anyone who wants to have a baby?

From APM, American Public Media, and WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace. Here's the host of Marketplace, Kai Risdahl. Time now for a little Freakonomics Radio. It's that moment every couple of weeks we talk to Stephen Dubner, the co-author of the books and the blog of the same name. It is the hidden side of everything. Dubner, long time no talk, man. Great to be back, Kai. Thanks for having me. You bet. You trained as a Navy pilot, I know. I wonder if you ever thought about afterward working as a commercial pilot. Was that ever a plan? Yeah, no, not really. That was never my thing. Well, if you had, and if you had interviewed with, let's say, Alaska Airlines, there's something you would have needed to know.

Here's an airline spokesperson, Marianne Lindsey. In general, there's a question that's asked, you know, have you smoked or used tobacco products within the last, I believe it's six months. And we go by how the employee responds to that question. And then before they are hired, they have a drug test that they take that detects nicotine use. So Alaska Airlines would not hire me were I a smoker, yes? Alaska Airlines would not hire you if you were a smoker. Now, they've had this policy for quite a few years. More and more companies now are refusing to hire anyone who uses tobacco. A lot of health care firms, especially, and hospitals.

It has to be about cutting health care costs, right? Right, right. That's a primary reason for sure. So smokers are more expensive than non-smokers if you're the company. By one estimate, about $4,000 a year in terms of health care and lost productivity and so on. But, you know, there's also the idea that you want to make every workplace healthier, which means, you know, smoke-free seems to be a good idea there. Right. Okay.

That makes sense. Question number two, though, Dubner, is this. Last time I checked, and I understand this is not a question, last time I checked, smoking is legal, man. Yes, it is. Yeah. And so can they do that? Yeah.

That's the question. So as it turns out, in terms of the legality of hiring smokers, 29 states have passed laws that don't let companies turn down smokers. But the other 21 states do allow you to do that. So if I'm a company in New York or North Carolina or California, I cannot reject an employee because he or she smokes. But if I run a company in Pennsylvania or Florida or Alaska, I can. So it's a pretty severe split, which recently led to a piece in the New England Journal of Medicine about the ethics of not hiring smokers. Here's one of the authors, Zeke Emanuel, who's a bioethicist and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. I'm a cancer doctor. I find smoking disgusting.

I find smoking horrible. I wish that everyone who did it could quit. All right, so it's not hard to think that he's in favor of not hiring smokers, right? But wait, there's more. But I also recognize that it's not voluntary, that most people start before they're adults, and that it's incredibly hard to quit once you've started. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. Not voluntary?

I mean, Zeke Emanuel's a smart guy and all, but, huh? Right. So that is really the basis of his argument, which is that most smokers want to quit but can't, and to refuse to hire them is therefore discriminatory or at least unethical. Does this break down on socioeconomic lines? I mean, is there a low-income, low-wage worker versus high-wage, high-income person thing? Yeah, that's a great question. So low-income people are substantially more likely to smoke than high-income people across the board. So if you're a low-income smoker and now you can't get

a job because you smoke, it's sort of a double jeopardy. There's also the fact that smoking is to employ because those guys, they don't smoke, they don't drink, they eat very healthy, they don't engage in high-risk sporting activities. That just seems to me exactly where we don't want to be going. Right. So, Kai, you can imagine a future where nobody wants to hire anybody who does anything at all risky, maybe not even risky, just expensive. Like, look, becoming pregnant, having kids, right? Because as we all increasingly share health care costs, that means that you increasingly are thinking about what I do because it affects what you'll pay in insurance and taxes. Now, in the case of smoking, what's interesting, it's really all about the incentives. In a tough labor market like ours, will it turn out to be that getting a job is such a strong incentive that it might help a smoker who's tried everything but everything else has failed?

I have no idea if that will work, but it'll sure be worth keeping an eye on. Stephen Dubner, freeeconomics.com is the website. Stephen, we'll see you in a couple of weeks, man. Thanks so much, Guy. Hey, podcast listeners. Coming up on the next Freakonomics Radio, Steve Levitt and I answer your questions. Here's one from a reader named Sebastian Savoie. Is it safe to sneeze with your eyes open?

That's the best question we can get from a reader. It's another installment of Frequently Asked Questions. Gesundheit. Thank you.