The Banned-wagon

There is apparently a very strong new effort to ban smoking by hospital employees altogether. In other words, treating tobacco like an illegal drug. Potential employees would need to take urine tests to detect the presence of nicotine, and employees found to have been smoking, even at home, would be subject to termination. This is pure insanity. It's done ostensibly to reduce healthcare costs and to encourage healthy living. This is akin to Detroit's big-three banning employees from driving gasoline-powered cars. Why would a producer ban it's employees from an activity that the producer believes could possibly lead to a need for the producer's product?

This ban-this-ban-that mentality has got to stop. You can't protect people from themselves. When you try to do this, you damage the fabric of a free society, and the ability of people to pursue happiness. Part of life is the aspect of risk. The reason we have insurance is to hedge against risk, NOT to remove risk. You can't get out of bed in the morning without risking your life, and even so, many people die in bed in their sleep. No place is completely safe, no activity or lack of activity is completely safe. The most important thing you can do in life is to ENJOY it, provided you're not hurting others through your enjoyment. We need to stop banning things that some people are on the bandwagon for, in the name of protecting from themselves those who aren't on the bandwagon.