My employer and I guess several others offer an incentive to become or maintain a tobacco free for 12 months program. This amounts to $50.00 off of your medical insurance premiums a month, however the use of electronic cigarettes is not incuded and will not be allowed to receive the discount. This is insanity as it is a tobacco free device and not just the monetary gain but the pledge itself is a great idea to help people quit analogs for good. What can we do so that employers will recognize the electronic cigarette as a powerful aid and recognized for its benefits? Has anyone challenged this with their company?
Tobacco FREE Insurance Pledge Disount
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My company also offers this and includes the gum in the not allowed list. The patch, however, is fine. 
Yes, whatever happened to the good old days when smoking was bad for you. The zealots have taken control.
GregH: was there any explanation for why the patch is OK but the gum is not? That makes no sense to me...
(Not that any of this makes sense)
(Not that any of this makes sense)
No, there wasn't. And you're right. It makes no sense at all. Maybe there will be more information available tomorrow when enrollment begins. But I remember the not allowed list including cigarettes (all forms of smoking), smokeless tobacco, hookas, and the gum. I don't recall if the lozenges are OK or not. And I honestly don't recall if the list specifically included e-cigs or not. But the patch was listed as OK.
Even before I saw the list, I was determined that I would not take their pledge. Even though it does offer a reduced premium, I decided at what price? Tobacco and nicotine are currently not illegal, and I do not want my employer telling me that I can't use it if I so choose. And then we have to ask where does it end? Will there be a pledge next year to not eat fried foods? No fast food? What about risky sports activities? How will all of the above be policed? Enough. The nanny state ends here.
I'm 100% with you, GregH. No skiing pledge! No driving my car pledge! No getting pregnant pledge! No surgery pledge! No Red dye #2 pledge! No woodworking pledge! No living in a big city that has car exhaust pledge! No traveling over bridges that are rusted out and will fall down pledge! No living in my own house in a neighborhood with natural gas lines that might explode pledge!
Where do I sign?
Where do I sign?
So how would they know if you were using gum instead of the patch? If they allow ANY nicotine use, there are no tests to distinguish between gum nicotine, patch nicotine or e-cigarette nicotine, for that matter. I would tell them you're smoke-free and don't use the e-cig in front of management!
This is the comments about ecigs in our FAQ regarding Tobacco Free Discount
If I use electronic cigarettes, cigars or pipes, would I still be considered tobacco-free?
No. We would not consider someone tobacco-free if they are using electronic cigarettes, cigars or pipes. Little scientific
research has been done on these electronic products to support manufacturer claims that they are a safe alternative to
conventional tobacco products. The Food and Drug Administration has not approved electronic cigarettes, cigars or pipes as an
aid to quit smoking or for anything else. In 2009, the FDA refused to allow various brands of electronic cigarettes, cigars, and
pipes, and their components, to be imported into the U.S. All forms of tobacco products are included in the tobacco-free
pledge because research shows that the use of any tobacco product can cause significant health problems that affect our
health plan members and the cost of their health benefits.
If I use electronic cigarettes, cigars or pipes, would I still be considered tobacco-free?
No. We would not consider someone tobacco-free if they are using electronic cigarettes, cigars or pipes. Little scientific
research has been done on these electronic products to support manufacturer claims that they are a safe alternative to
conventional tobacco products. The Food and Drug Administration has not approved electronic cigarettes, cigars or pipes as an
aid to quit smoking or for anything else. In 2009, the FDA refused to allow various brands of electronic cigarettes, cigars, and
pipes, and their components, to be imported into the U.S. All forms of tobacco products are included in the tobacco-free
pledge because research shows that the use of any tobacco product can cause significant health problems that affect our
health plan members and the cost of their health benefits.
Like my Momma always told me, "You can't argue with stupid".
pfffftt.
It's the same ol "quit or die" BS which now includes vaping.
The statement is contradictory in itself. They use the FDA as a standard....yet the FDA insists that e-cigs are NOT tobacco products, but a drug. Even if they rewrote the rules to say " no nicotine" to avoid the contradiction....then gum, patches and lozenges would be out...and non-nic e-cigs would still be in. In short, they have no foundation for not allowing e-cigs, other than prejudice.
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"All forms ..........can cause significant health problems that affect our health plan members and the cost of their health benefits."
The same can be said about many of employees habits. All forms of alcohol use, all forms of drinking soda, all forms of eating trans fats, all forms of riding a motorcycle, all forms of skiing, all forms of sugar consumption..... These prohibitionists need to be stopped.
I read an article by one of the leading antis, CTFK, they quoted the additional cost of smoking at somewhere around $8,500 over the LIFETIME of a smokers life. Now CTFK has a habit of exaggerating everything tobacco wise so you have to take it with a grain of salt. If you take a look at this study published in The New England Journal of Medicine you'll see that in reality smokers probably save society money.
Here
However, that was published over ten years ago when science was a bit less corrupted.
I wonder how long these companies will pay $600 for your "pledge". How many smokers will get prescriptions for Chantix? How long will insurance companies offer lower rates for health insurance coverage if a decrease in smoking doesn't lead to a decrease in insurance payouts? Considering MOST ill effects from smoking show up later in life, after retirement, how much do the insurance companies covering you company benefit?
Is this pledge only being offered to tobacco users?
The same can be said about many of employees habits. All forms of alcohol use, all forms of drinking soda, all forms of eating trans fats, all forms of riding a motorcycle, all forms of skiing, all forms of sugar consumption..... These prohibitionists need to be stopped.
I read an article by one of the leading antis, CTFK, they quoted the additional cost of smoking at somewhere around $8,500 over the LIFETIME of a smokers life. Now CTFK has a habit of exaggerating everything tobacco wise so you have to take it with a grain of salt. If you take a look at this study published in The New England Journal of Medicine you'll see that in reality smokers probably save society money.
Here
However, that was published over ten years ago when science was a bit less corrupted.
I wonder how long these companies will pay $600 for your "pledge". How many smokers will get prescriptions for Chantix? How long will insurance companies offer lower rates for health insurance coverage if a decrease in smoking doesn't lead to a decrease in insurance payouts? Considering MOST ill effects from smoking show up later in life, after retirement, how much do the insurance companies covering you company benefit?
Is this pledge only being offered to tobacco users?
Another more recent study-
PLoS Medicine: Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure
"The researchers used their model to estimate the number of surviving individuals and the occurrence of various diseases for three hypothetical groups of men and women, examining data from the age of 20 until the time when the model predicted that everyone had died. The obese group consisted of never-smoking people with a BMI of more than 30; the healthy-living group consisted of never-smoking people with a healthy weight; the smoking group consisted of lifetime smokers with a healthy weight. Data from the Netherlands on the costs of illness were fed into the model to calculate the yearly and lifetime health-care costs of all three groups. The model predicted that until the age of 56, yearly health costs were highest for obese people and lowest for healthy-living people. At older ages, the highest yearly costs were incurred by the smoking group. However, because of differences in life expectancy (life expectancy at age 20 was 5 years less for the obese group, and 8 years less for the smoking group, compared to the healthy-living group), total lifetime health spending was greatest for the healthy-living people, lowest for the smokers, and intermediate for the obese people."
Emphasis mine.
PLoS Medicine: Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure
"The researchers used their model to estimate the number of surviving individuals and the occurrence of various diseases for three hypothetical groups of men and women, examining data from the age of 20 until the time when the model predicted that everyone had died. The obese group consisted of never-smoking people with a BMI of more than 30; the healthy-living group consisted of never-smoking people with a healthy weight; the smoking group consisted of lifetime smokers with a healthy weight. Data from the Netherlands on the costs of illness were fed into the model to calculate the yearly and lifetime health-care costs of all three groups. The model predicted that until the age of 56, yearly health costs were highest for obese people and lowest for healthy-living people. At older ages, the highest yearly costs were incurred by the smoking group. However, because of differences in life expectancy (life expectancy at age 20 was 5 years less for the obese group, and 8 years less for the smoking group, compared to the healthy-living group), total lifetime health spending was greatest for the healthy-living people, lowest for the smokers, and intermediate for the obese people."
Emphasis mine.
Personally, I'll skip the chantix thank you! Projectile vomiting is NOT my idea of fun....nor is it a good thing in my eyes. Anyone asking me about chantix gets this speech...this is not theory this is experience talking....that is what happened to ME on chantix.....ok I wasn't smoking cigarettes but I was puking so much I was afraid to eat ANYTHING. (OK rant off)
Like someone said......can't argue with stupid. I agree with everyone who has said we need to STOP policing every little thing. Our government treats us adults like we are teenagers with no thought or care in the world. They can't even figure out how to balance the budget for chrissake how can they honestly say that they can determine what is best for ME. Ok I'm done now really i mean it LOL
Probably, and I'm not sure, because gum is over the counter and don't you have to get the patch through a pharmacy?
They know exactly what they're doing with the budget. Were headed for a one world order if it works out for them. It's not just the US involved.
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Okay,last post on this subject, but the comments to this study are worth reading.
PLoS Medicine: A Peer-Reviewed Open-Access Journal
I shall copy, in its entirety, the post made by J. E. R. Staddon, James B. Duke Professor, emeritus, Duke University
Food for thought-
"This fascinating article confirms what many people have suspected (e.g., in my book The New Behaviorism (p. 89), that in terms of medical costs, smokers are cheaper than non-smokers - lower not just in lifetime but in annual costs. (It would be possible, for example, that although smokers incur only a half, say, the medical costs of non-smokers, they live only one third as long, yielding a higher cost per year. Smokers die sooner, true enough, but not enough sooner to outweigh their lesser cost.) If the cost of state pensions are factored in, the disparity is of course even greater.
What might this difference imply for government policy? The answer is far from obvious.
Several other questions must be answered first. Does lower cost (per year or per lifetime - smokers are lower in both) imply higher (Darwinian) fitness? It is possible that a short life, a larger percentage of which is productive, is correlated with higher fitness, given the
well-known fact that lifetime affects, and is strongly affected by, natural selection (e.g., Reznick et al., 1996).
What is the proper role of government: is it collective - acting for the best interests of the community as a whole? Or should it be concerned with individual well being, even if that conflicts with collective good? More generally, should government only do for people what
they cannot do for themselves, as libertarians contend, or does it have broader obligations?
In our secular society, utilitarian considerations, the greatest good for the greatest number, usually carry the most persuasive weight. A utilitarian argument aimed at maximizing the collective good would say that since smokers cost society less than non-smokers, smoking
should be if not encouraged at least not discouraged. The Darwinian-fitness hypothesis leads to the same conclusion.
But what about the individual suffering that smoking causes? Here the conclusion is not at all clear. We all die and dying, whether smoking-induced or not, is rarely pleasant. A policy-maker urging abolition of smoking would therefore have to make the argument that a
smoking-induced death is more unpleasant than death via other causes. Perhaps - but against this must be balanced the pleasure that smokers derive from their habit. And smoking, unlike drinking alcohol, never leads to violence or death by automobile. So immediate harm to others (I discount the conjectural small, and avoidable, risk of passive smoke) is not available as a backup argument.
What seems to be left to anti-smoking advocates are two possibilities: a belief that longevity is an absolute good, or a taboo against smoking. So, is old age always a virtue? Not according to Jonathan Swift, who writes of the Methuselah-like Struldbruggs, eternally enfeebled by the infirmities of age: "the Question therefore was not whether a Man would choose to be always in the Prime of Youth, attended with Prosperity and Health, but how he would pass a perpetual Life under all the usual
Disadvantages which old Age brings along with it." And should the choice between a short and happy life and a long but perhaps less-happy one be up to the individual or is the government obliged to intervene?
The remaining possibility is to enforce a moral, faith-based prohibition of smoking no more tied to utilitarian arguments than the Hindu prohibition against eating beef or the Jewish one against pork. But is the promotion of such a belief proper for the government of a secular society?
However the political process comes out, we should at least be clear that the arguments for the prohibition of smoking rest on shaky scientific foundations."
PLoS Medicine: A Peer-Reviewed Open-Access Journal
I shall copy, in its entirety, the post made by J. E. R. Staddon, James B. Duke Professor, emeritus, Duke University
Food for thought-
"This fascinating article confirms what many people have suspected (e.g., in my book The New Behaviorism (p. 89), that in terms of medical costs, smokers are cheaper than non-smokers - lower not just in lifetime but in annual costs. (It would be possible, for example, that although smokers incur only a half, say, the medical costs of non-smokers, they live only one third as long, yielding a higher cost per year. Smokers die sooner, true enough, but not enough sooner to outweigh their lesser cost.) If the cost of state pensions are factored in, the disparity is of course even greater.
What might this difference imply for government policy? The answer is far from obvious.
Several other questions must be answered first. Does lower cost (per year or per lifetime - smokers are lower in both) imply higher (Darwinian) fitness? It is possible that a short life, a larger percentage of which is productive, is correlated with higher fitness, given the
well-known fact that lifetime affects, and is strongly affected by, natural selection (e.g., Reznick et al., 1996).
What is the proper role of government: is it collective - acting for the best interests of the community as a whole? Or should it be concerned with individual well being, even if that conflicts with collective good? More generally, should government only do for people what
they cannot do for themselves, as libertarians contend, or does it have broader obligations?
In our secular society, utilitarian considerations, the greatest good for the greatest number, usually carry the most persuasive weight. A utilitarian argument aimed at maximizing the collective good would say that since smokers cost society less than non-smokers, smoking
should be if not encouraged at least not discouraged. The Darwinian-fitness hypothesis leads to the same conclusion.
But what about the individual suffering that smoking causes? Here the conclusion is not at all clear. We all die and dying, whether smoking-induced or not, is rarely pleasant. A policy-maker urging abolition of smoking would therefore have to make the argument that a
smoking-induced death is more unpleasant than death via other causes. Perhaps - but against this must be balanced the pleasure that smokers derive from their habit. And smoking, unlike drinking alcohol, never leads to violence or death by automobile. So immediate harm to others (I discount the conjectural small, and avoidable, risk of passive smoke) is not available as a backup argument.
What seems to be left to anti-smoking advocates are two possibilities: a belief that longevity is an absolute good, or a taboo against smoking. So, is old age always a virtue? Not according to Jonathan Swift, who writes of the Methuselah-like Struldbruggs, eternally enfeebled by the infirmities of age: "the Question therefore was not whether a Man would choose to be always in the Prime of Youth, attended with Prosperity and Health, but how he would pass a perpetual Life under all the usual
Disadvantages which old Age brings along with it." And should the choice between a short and happy life and a long but perhaps less-happy one be up to the individual or is the government obliged to intervene?
The remaining possibility is to enforce a moral, faith-based prohibition of smoking no more tied to utilitarian arguments than the Hindu prohibition against eating beef or the Jewish one against pork. But is the promotion of such a belief proper for the government of a secular society?
However the political process comes out, we should at least be clear that the arguments for the prohibition of smoking rest on shaky scientific foundations."
Thanks for those, RothenBJ. Basically, smokers incur less lifetime health-care costs, they collect less in retirement pension money, pay more in insurance premiums, and also pay exorbitant amounts of "sin" taxes over their lifetime. Instead of being vilified, we should have had people jumping all over themselves to THANK us profusely for all we've done to carry the greatest load for all society.
PS: the patch is over the counter, too, just like the gum
PS: the patch is over the counter, too, just like the gum
It only comes down to "We allow it only if no-one knows you are doing it". Zealots, it isn't enough to be tobacco free. Your residual self image has to be tobacco free too lol
As kristin said, if nic is allowed just say you are using the patch and use e-cig stealthily instead.
As kristin said, if nic is allowed just say you are using the patch and use e-cig stealthily instead.
Ya you wear the patch at work and go home and vape your brains out.
Untrue. Actually, this very topic was discussed extensively at the 2-day FDA workshop on Long-term Use of NRT that Bill Godshall and I attended. Despite some lab studies on the cellular level that pointed toward some elevated risks, there were no clincial trials or population studies showing those risks elevated in real human beings.
See Tobacco Truth
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Mayo Clinic Misinformation About Smokeless Tobacco
Discussion here: Tobacco Truth: Cancer Risks from Smokeless Tobacco Use: Next To Nil
Here is a discussion of cardiovascuolar risk from smokeless tobacco: Tobacco Truth: The American Heart Association Has No Compassion for Smokers
It's a no-brainer that smokeless tobacco in any form would not endanger lung health.
Research shows that users of Swedish snus (a type of moist snuff) do not have elevated risks of disease. http://www.starscientific.com/404/roth.pdf
Snus users live as long as those who stopped all tobacco use.
Assessment of Swedish snus for tobacco harm reduct... [Lancet. 2007] - PubMed result
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