We can’t stop the proliferation of guns. We can’t stop domestic abuse. We can’t stop the Ku Klux Klan from spreading racism.

So, by golly, the city of Tallahassee will pick an easy target: People who smoke. Or at least its employees who smoke.

City commissioners last week discussed banning the hiring of anyone who uses tobacco products and demand employees who do use tobacco quit within six months or be terminated. They tabled the idea to consider its impact on hiring. But it will be back.

This is a wrong-headed move by the City Commission. It may seem noble. It may seem practical. But it is self-righteous, political correctness that is an invasion of privacy — and a curious exercise by the same board that recently agreed not to ban the hiring of felons.

Of course, it’s easy to pick on smokers. Smoking is smelly, costly, annoying and, yes, unhealthy. It leads to all kinds of pulmonary problems and cancer and ruins your skin. Who can be for smoking? Not me.

I quit smoking 20 years ago after about an equal time as a smoker. I wish I had never smoked. If asked, I would tell people not to smoke. If asked, I would tell smokers to quit.

But those are lessons for individuals to learn and choose on their own. Not have them forced on them by an employer or denied employment because of it.

People smoke because — surprise — it’s pleasurable. Eventually, many realize the pleasure is not worth the negative consequences. But again, that’s their lesson to learn.

Certainly, it’s within the purview of the commission to set workplace constraints on smoking, as many businesses have. The city bans smoking in city buildings because it bothers and endangers non-smokers. It’s an understandable policy to ban workers smoking while performing city functions to maintain a professional image.

But to say workers can’t smoke on their breaks? To say they can’t smoke while in their own vehicles at lunch or while driving between city jobs? To say employees will be tested annually for nicotine use? That’s crossing a line.

City commissioners – and this is where they get pious – say they are concerned about health and health costs of their employees.

Yet, they are not so concerned they are going to make rules about even greater health dangers.

Like alcohol. Employees who drink every night after work pose more danger to their health than smokers.

Like eating. Obesity and its chief cousin — being too flipping overweight — are the nation’s biggest health challenges. Two thirds of Americans are obese or overweight. When you’re overweight, it affects you heart, your lungs, your bones, your blood pressure, your ability to do any physical task.

One of the city commissioners said smoking is an addiction that interferes with work as the workers plot their next cigarette. Eating is an addiction, too: Folks eat too much and too often. For every five minutes lost to a worker stepping outside for a smoke, you’ve got a worker wasting time getting cookies, a doughnut, a bag of chips or another of his/her half-dozen soft drinks a day.

If the city thinks it pays unfairly for the health costs of smoking workers, do what every other business does: charge smokers a surcharge on their insurance premiums. If people want to smoke, they can pay the extra amount. And still have a job.

Holding the line on its health care costs is the city’s responsibility. Telling people how to behave is not.

Because here’s a news flash: We’re all going to die.

Smoking may hasten that death. Or it may not. Some people smoke their whole life and live to be 90. Some never smoke and die at 50.

But millions of people have smoked — or eaten too much or drank too much — while continuing to do a heck of a job for their employers.

The city says only 244 of its 2,800 employees use tobacco products – a 9 percent figure that may be low given national statistics that say 17.8 percent of Americans smoke cigarettes. But whatever the number, I ask, “How many of those smokers are doing a bad job?”

Has a city worker ever died of smoking-related problems while performing a critical function? Are city employees who smoke taking off any more sick days — or anymore days off than overweight city employees or employees who drink? Is the city losing huge numbers productive hours by workers who use tobacco?

The choices people make about their health can be dismaying. But those choices are part of every citizen’s personal freedom.

City commissioners don’t need to be in the business of making those choices for city employees.

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