2 Women Fired for Having Nicotine in Blood

Here's yet another example of an employer intruding too far into the personal lives of its staff. According to the CBSNews.com story:

Weyco gave employees 15 months to quit [smoking], before subjecting them to random nicotine testing. If you fail, you’re out.

...

at a company benefits meeting two years ago, the company president announced, "As of January 1st, 2005, anyone that has nicotine in their body will be fired,” Anita remembers. “And we sat there in awe. And I spoke out at that time. ‘You can't do that to us’ And then he said, ‘Yes, I can.’ I said, ‘That's not legal.’ And he came back with, ‘Yes, it is.’”

And it was legal: in Michigan, there’s no law that prevents a boss from firing people virtually at will. At Weyco, that meant no smoking at work, no smoking at home, no smoking period.

If you read the full story, it seems this is the usual case of an employer supposedly trying to limit health related liabilities, a concept I do not object to. In general, smokers have more health issues and employers don't like them causing health insurance premiums to increase. What I don't understand is why the employers don't mitigate this liability by either passing on the cost of the higher premiums to smokers or by not offering them health insurance. If people want to smoke while away from the office, don't fire them for it; simply let them pay for the increased costs. Smokers already pay more for life insurance (if they directly buy a policy unrelated to their work benefits) so why not let them pay more for their medical insurance?