- If you’re an unemployed smoker, don’t bother trying to be a nurse. Around the country, hospitals are implementing no-smoking-allowed policies for their employees, subjecting new applicants to urine tests and treating smoking as a terminable offense. This isn’t entirely without merit: an average smoker costs their employer about $3,391 per year in health costs and lost productivity. On the other hand, it may set a troublesome precedent for other lifestyle choices that result in higher-than-average health costs (skiing, eating meat from Taco Bell). Oddly, though both the SEIU and the tobacco lobby have voiced opposition to the law, neither are aggressively campaigning against it. (thanks for the tip, toutlejour) source