AN ETHICAL ANALYSIS OF NICOTINE NON-HIRING PRACTICES: SHOULD THIS POLICY BE SNUFFED OUT?

The deleterious health impacts of smoking are well established—but unemployment is bad for health too. In this article, I evaluate the ethics of nicotine non-hiring practices (NNPs) and use analogies to other health behaviors (obesity and alcohol use) to better examine the policy. First, I considered arguments for NNPs. The most popular is that NNPs drive down smoking rates among employees and the general public. There are multiple plausible mechanisms to do so—however, I was unable to find any convincing empirical data supporting these hypotheses. I also argue that the reasons to avoid discrimination on the basis of protected classes (to promote societal cohesion, uphold equal individual moral worth and mitigate long-standing systemic harms) are insufficient to prevent NNPs. Finally, I discuss that for optimal functioning of a liberal democracy, organizations have the right to choose who they wish to hire. Hence, it requires a significant ethical harm to prevent hiring on the basis of nicotine use. Therefore, I next consider arguments that critique NNPs. I highlight three harms by NNPs as particularly strong. NNPs erode personal autonomy by taking away choice for individuals. However, this paternalism may be warranted by the seriousness of smoking as a public health threat and the insufficiency of less restrictive interventions in helping smokers who want to quit to do so successfully. NNPs also violate the privacy of individuals, though this is less compelling as nicotine use is linked to inferior job performance (beyond merely increasing healthcare costs) and therefore nicotine use seems relevant to the hiring process. Finally, NNPs concentrate their harms (or at least their paternalism) in disadvantaged groups which raises significant justice concerns. Overall, I find nicotine non-hiring practices to be ethically permissible, though they are ethically fragile policies whose legitimacy depends on empirical justification, sensitive implementation, and continued scrutiny. I generalize this analysis to produce a set of criteria for when a hiring policy might ethically consider health-related behavior.

Grantor dc:publisher

Temple University. Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Joshi, Tejas

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Tuohy, Brian

• Medical ethics
• Public policy
• Public health
• Health justice
• Hiring policy
• Obesity
• Tobacco use
• Urban bioethics

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Repository record dc:identifier.uri

https://scholarshare.temple.edu/handle/20.500.12613/11268

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/11268