By J.G. Wallace, Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly
news@fwbusiness.com
The numbers are staggering but the facts speak for themselves.
An estimated 45.8 million adult Americans smoke according to research by the Wellness Councils of America. Half of those smokers will suffer a smoking-related death or disability.
Smoking also carries a very high financial burden. Tobacco use accounts for more than $75 billion in medical expenses each year, and an additional $80 billion annually in lost workplace productivity due to employee sickness, absence and/or time spent smoking during the work day.
The costs are difficult for employers to ignore and more area businesses are moving to limited smoking areas or an entirely smoke-free workplace.
Businesses even suffer from increased fire and accident risks and increased cleaning costs due to smoke pollution. Carpets, furniture and computer equipment all fare better in a smoke-free workplace. In an age with tighter cost controls and less room to spare in corporate budgets, more companies are turning to incentive programs to help their employees snuff out their smokes.
In Allen County, manufacturing firms that traditonally tolerated employee tobacco use even on the shop floor have taken steps to make the transition to smoke-free premises. BF Goodrich, in Woodburn, recently became a smoke-free building and plans to progress to an entirely smoke free property this year.
“In their case they had allowed smoking on the plant floor so it went beyond a health risk to a hazardous situation,” said Dick Conklin, director of Tobacco Free Allen County, an organization that assists businesses and individuals with smoking cessation programs.
Through the agency, Goodrich was able to provide support to employees who wanted to quit smoking in the form of education, medications, support lines and even programs such as hypnosis and acupuncture. Goodrich was backed in its efforts by the plant's union, which greatly aided the program's success, Conklin said.
Through legislation and changes in public attitudes most area businesses already are smoke-free inside and have been for several years.
Most recent business-related smoking cessation efforts have been from companies now wanting to go entirely smoke free on their premises. International Truck & Engine, Fort Wayne, and General Motors Fort Wayne Truck Assembly Plant both are working with the agency toward adopting smoke-free policies on their grounds, Conklin said.
For a program to work, Conklin said, there has to be more than talk and education. “It's an addiction, and a difficult one to fight,” Conklin said. “It's not enough to talk about education and awareness. They already know smoking is harmful to them. It's a major lifestyle change and (smokers) are addicted.”
Conklin said companies that assist with purchasing nicotine replacement products like gums or patches have higher success levels than those that work through education alone.
One local program geared toward individual participants, rather than corporate groups, experienced a strong success rate through a combined approach of education and medication support. One year after completing the program, 53 percent of those who participated in Lutheran Hospital’s Tobacco Intervention Program were still non-smokers.
The corporate programs offered by Lutheran Health Network's Business Health Services department have been dissolved due to a lack of demand.
“In the 1990's we did so many of these corporate programs that I can't recall them all,” said program director Pam Potts. But Potts said she hasn't been asked to administer a corporate program in the past five years. “A lot of companies just didn't sign up,” Potts said. “We weren't doing enough to warrant obtaining new materials.”
Potts attributed the downturn to many companies having long- established smoking policies. Nearly 70 percent of the United States workforce worked under a smoke-free policy by 1999.
With fewer smokers in the workplace and a program that carries a fee of $125, companies were hard pressed to find enough employees to reach a mininum number required.
“Still it seems like there are a lot of smokers out there,” Potts said.
Six states prohibit smoking in all workplaces, both public and private: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts and New York. Other states including Indiana have a variety of laws that restrict smoking at work in one way or another — either by limiting smoking to designated areas, prohibiting smoking in public work areas, or prohibiting smoking in certain types of workplaces such as hospitals and restaurants.
Smokers in Indiana can only light up if they are 20 feet away from a building entrance and in a designated area.
In January of 1999, the city of Fort Wayne banned smoking in restaurants, except for fully enclosed areas, but exempted taverns and bowling alleys. Fort Wayne restaurants that offer a smoking section must fully enclose a separate area from other dining areas and have a separate ventilation system.
A May 2001 study sponsored by Smokefree Indiana and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and conducted by the Hudson Institute found that the ban had no measureable impact on the food service field. “Fort Wayne's ban on smoking in restaurants had no numerically verifiable impact on the volume of restaurant business in Allen County,” the study said.
Despite initial predictions of financial doom for restaurants forced to go smoke-free, other studies indicate that bans on indoor smoking have not had a negative effect on the economy.
In Florida, the statewide smoke-free law that took effect July 1, 2003 has not hurt sales or employment in the hotel, restaurant and tourism industries, according to that state's Bureau of Economic and Business Research.
In Delaware, there have been increases in the number of restaurants and taproom licenses since the smoking ban took effect.
In New York City, a 2003 study found that business receipts for restaurants and bars had increased 8.7 percent and employment has risen. Levels of “cotinine,” a marker for smoke exposure in non-smoking workers, decreased by 85 percent since the smoking ban was put in place.
A survey released by anti-smoking group, smoke-free.org, found that 23.3 percent of 2,000 workplaces with new smoking restrictions reported a reduction in maintenance costs. Similarly, a 1994 analysis by the EPA concluded that implementing smoking restrictions in U.S. workplaces would reduce operating and maintenance costs by between $4 billion to $8 billion each year. The same analysis estimated that, all told, smoking in the workplace increases costs to employers by an estimated $1,300 per year per smoking employee.
More than 1.1 million adults in Indiana smoke cigarettes, or 24.9 percent of the state’s adult population, according to statistics provided by the Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation program.
Indiana ranks seventh among all states in adult smoking prevalence and is consistently higher than the national average adult smoking rate of 20.8 percent. Approximately 27 percent of adult men and 23 percent of adult women in Indiana smoke.
It is estimated the total cost of smoking-related illnesses in Indiana reaches $1.9 billion each year, according to the Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation program.