< PREVIOUS ] [ 1986 and Before Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
For more than a decade, Gov. Dick Lamm has been telling us our state government is running short of money, and that society faces some difficult dilemmas because the wonders of modern medicine have outpaced society's abilities to pay for the wonders. Most politicians ignore these possibilities and instead cater to trends, but not our Governor Gloom. He dares to consider the consequences.
At least, he does when he's writing books. He didn't consider the financial and social consequences recently when he issued an executive order.
As of Nov. 21, state employees found it quite difficult to smoke on the job, thanks to an order from the governor's office. Those who persist in befouling the atmosphere will receive counseling.
As someone who's chewing his mustache after giving up a daily habit of two packs of Camel straights, I'm sure that Lamm is making a great contribution to individual health, personal productivity, acceptable addictions (chocolate and careerism, instead of heroin and tobacco), and the other noble causes of the '80s. But as a citizen and taxpayer, I have to worry about the consequences of Lamm's ukase, because the governor obviously did not.
Suppose that all state employees really do quit smoking. At last count, there were about 59,000 state employees. If they're anything like average Americans, about 19,000 of them smoke cigarettes -- about 34 cigarettes a day apiece. That works out to about 12 million packs a year. Since each pack means a dime in state taxes, that's $1.2 million in annual state revenue that will be forever lost.
The governor has made no mention of how this potential revenue shortage will be made up.
But the $1.2 million is just a drop in the bucket. Non-smokers and ex-smokers tend to live longer than smokers I have read that quitting smoking will add five years to one's life (it seems to me that quitting adds five years to every day, but that's probably a different matter).
This increased longevity might impress a humanitarian, but it also means retired state employees will be postponing their duty to die by five years -- while collecting pensions from a strapped state treasury. It's hard to predict how much all this health will cost our children and grandchildren, but state pension costs will rise by at least $10 million a year if all 19,000 smokers on the state payroll are freed from the loathsome toils of nicotine and live five years longer.
So far, Lamm's pipedream would cut revenues by $1.2 million a year and increase annual costs by S10 million. But the worst is yet to come.
Prohibiting smoking in the workplace is alleged to enhance the productivity of all employees -- smokers and non-smokers alike. They get more work done in a day. For state employees, that work often consists of issuing tickets for going 58 mph in a 55-mph zone, assigning meaningless term papers, snooping at welfare recipients, devising new laws that are expensive or impossible to obey, allowing homicidal maniacs to walk the streets, finding new activities to tax and inspiring fear of tax collectors.
And if state employees can't smoke on the job, they'll get more done at work: meddling, harassment and hair-splitting. The rest of us would be much more productive if more state employees wasted their days in nicotinic reverie.
If Dick Lamm truly cared about the future financial stability of Colorado and the well-being of its population, he would have thought this through. He could have prevented this ensuing trauma. He might not have made a pack-a-day habit a requirement for state employment, but if he truly cared about the rest of us, Lamm would encourage state employees to pay more taxes, shorten their lives and get less done.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1986 and Before Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >