Question: If someone is wearing a nicotine patch, does that show up in the test? How about the gum? Are those people considered "smokers" and told to hit the road?
Yes, any intake of nicotine gets metabolized into cotinine. There is an "allowable threshold" to take into account second-hand smoke or nicotine intake via eggplant or peppers; but anything over that threshold corresponds to nicotine usage. It doesn't matter whether it came from gum, patches, smoking, vaping, etc. it shows up the same. The companies that have adopted urine tests don't just have a "no smoking" policy -- they effectively have a "no nicotine" policy.
Theoretically, they could also have a no sudafed and no aspirin policy as well; as these are also legally available over the counter drugs.
Much as I hate "Big Brother", I tend to agree.
I hate big brother as well. But the purpose of government, at least as defined in the Declaration of Independence, is to secure our liberty. This particular use of government is not a mandate that anyone do anything, but rather that they refrain from infringing our rights. True rights impose only a negative obligation upon others -- i.e. an obligation for non-interference with our exercise. My exercise of free speech requires only that others not interfere. So this is not very big-brotherish. It is essentially telling people to leave me alone so long as I am harming nobody. Ideally, people wouldn't even need to be told.
I'll be the first to raise my hand and wave it frantically in the air. Non-smokers have done an excellent job of making me feel like - for lack of a better phrase - a "scum bag". I could definitely use some tips in that area. Suggestions?
We are social creatures, and as a result our basic need to feel acceptance and social approval can be used to manipulate our perceptions. Classic experiments on peer pressure show that people will question themselves when they are the only person in a room with a certain answer -- even if that answer is extremely obviously correct. Other experiments show that ordinary people can be induced to do really horrendous things both as compliance to authority figures and to merely fit in.
Most of these experiments were done in the wake of the Holocaust to answer the underlying question of how people could have possibly been induced to participate in something so horrible. And the sad answer is that though the behaviors were uniquely evil, the persons involved did not have special propensities; and that given the proper environment, basic human drives that affect all of us can be used to induce perceptions and even behaviors that are well beyond evil.
These same techniques are used to manipulate you into feeling shamed, worthless, scummy and ultimately compliant. What makes them even more powerful is that those who do not smoke also get to feel superior on the basis -- not of something they do that is virtuous -- but on the basis of something they do NOT do. So it is a form of what I would call effortless virtue that allows one group of people to feel superior to another group just by virtue of their existence. This superior group will naturally feel entitled to mistreat the inferior group; even though those designations are entirely arbitrary and have no real basis. The prison guard experiments from the 1960's showed this in miniature.
But there are ways out of this trap. For example, in peer pressure experiments, the odds of a person having the courage to give a correct answer were dramatically improved if just one other person in a group was willing to give the right answer.
Be that one person -- the person who stands up, and who gives others courage. Soon, you will not be alone.
That is hard to do for a couple of reasons. The first is obvious -- fear of social disapproval. The second is less obvious, but is something called soft totalitarianism. Soft totalitarianism is a way of causing social compliance through indirect economic sanction rather than through the more obvious means of thugs visiting in the middle of the night.
The original poster's fear of being summarily fired is an example of the power of soft totalitarianism. He was doing nothing morally wrong. He wasn't hurting anybody, stealing anything, defrauding anyone or anything of the sort. All he did was harmlessly vape in a private area. Yet, because he was under unknown video surveillance, even though he was not smoking, he was fearful of extreme economic sanction merely due to how what he was doing *might have appeared.*
Although it isn't widely publicized, employers have a right to fire people for their outside-of-work political advocacies and, in fact, it goes on quite often in this country; and only one state (CA) has laws preventing it. This is a way of enforcing compliance even with expressed thought without having to employ thugs. Quite creative.
I have the luxury of being mainly self-employed as a writer. But what I do is, albeit politely, I vape obviously. I use long (120-155mm) slender but non-white vaping devices in public places. Everybody knows my long green, purple and black devices with green and blue lights are not cigarettes. And when I do so, I use ostentatious open-mouthed and snap inhales and so forth. I actually make a conscious effort to make it look sexy and alluring. I have some cards from V4L and SmokeAnywhereFor Pennys that I hand to anyone who inquires. In this way, I gain public support and raise awareness.
You probably can't vape openly at work at your desk and I wouldn't suggest single-handedly taking on the machine. But instead I'd suggest doing what I do -- vape in public where it is seen, and hand cards to those who inquire. By vaping in public for all to see, you give courage to others and demonstrate that you don't feel you are doing anything wrong, which will help you buck the social conditioning.
