This article below reveals the kind of thing that chaps my you-know-what! Regardless of any individual’s opinion of smoking, if this sort of thing is allowed without challenge then there is nothing to stop an employer from progressively disallowing any personal activities that might lead to an employee suffering a health effect. I could see this trend disallowing employee participation in any kind of sports or do-it-yourself activity that might cause personal injury, in any personal relationships that might increase the exposure to communicable diseases (especially STDs), or in any lifestyle that might increase the likelihood of obesity, chemical dependence, or wrong-thinking. Then we really would have “Big Brother” but it would operate through businesses, not the government.Wake up America!! We don’t want to revert to the mind-set of the 20th century that resulted in retarded persons being sterilized so that they couldn’t procreate and perpetuate their “defective” genes and that justified purposely infecting black men with syphilis to provide a ready-made medical test group.I could understand an employer deciding not to hire smokers as new employees so that they know coming-in that remaining a non-smoker is a condition of employment. I think even this policy would be extreme; however, I can’t argue that it violates personal freedoms. There’s no way though that simply telling existing employees that they’ve got to eliminate personal habits that the employer has decided are unacceptably risky can be considered anything but dictatorial, illegally so in my view.THE ARTICLE:Company Fires All Employees Who SmokeMichigan Firm Won't Allow Smoking, Even On Employee's Own TimeLANSING, Mich. -- Four employees of a health care company have been fired for refusing to take a test to determine whether they smoke cigarettes. Weyco Inc., a health benefits administrator based in Okemos, Mich., adopted a policy Jan. 1 that allows employees to be fired if they smoke, even if the smoking happens after business hours or at home.Company founder Howard Weyers has said the anti-smoking rule was designed to shield the firm from high health care costs. "I don't want to pay for the results of smoking," he said. The rule led one employee to quit before the policy was adopted. Four others were fired when they balked at the smoking test. Chief Financial Officer Gary Climes estimated that 18 to 20 of the company's 200 employers were smokers when the policy was announced in 2003. Of those, as many as 14 quit smoking before the policy went into effect. The company offered them help to kick the habit."That is absolutely a victory," Climes said. On the company's Web site, it states:Weyco Inc. is a non-smoking company that strongly supports its employees in living healthy lifestyles.