Posted On: December 4, 2006, 2:28 pm CST

Posted By: KLS

As an employer you are free to act as you wish, Bob, as long as it is within the scope of laws in your state.

Your ethics are a matter of your personal choice, too. I don't think anyone is trying to argue that it isn't your choice.

If you don't want to hire smokers, then by all means, don't.

The problem with this particular situation is... it apparently was not made clear to the smoker that his employment was conditional upon a urine test for nicotine. In most cases, employers are required to make the conditions of employment known upon or before hiring. Depends on if it's an employment-at-will state.

Let's say you're a member of Oprah's book club and you read on your own personal time. The company for which you work decides that the book choices are junk. Your car is searched the next week and one of your Oprah books is discovered. You're then fired. The firing was questionably legal, and it was unethical.

Now to put the shoe on the other foot. If the company told you *before* you were hired that Oprah books were prohibited and employment was conditional upon compliance with such policy. Then you chose to violate the policy, got caught and subsequently fired. That would at least be ethical.

Personally, I want to be able to choose whether I work for a company that crawls all up in my private business and I want to know whether they intend to do so BEFORE I accept the job.