Lockheed Martin to Go Smokefree

Growing trend among companies to go smokefree

Parts excerpted from the Star-Telegram, 8/25/06

Lockheed Martin, based in Fort Worth (TX), unveiled plans Thursday to eliminate cigarettes
and all tobacco products from its campus-style properties starting Jan. 1. The new rules will prohibit smoking both inside Lockheed's buildings and outside -- going beyond the current policy that allows smoking in designated outside areas .

It's part of an effort to rein in rising healthcare expenses, which now cost the company about $800 million annually.

Although employees remain free to light up on their own time outside of work, the company is hoping that the new restrictions will push many smokers to drop the habit altogether. And it's offering workers and their families free access to programs aimed at helping them quit.

Lockheed's intent "is not to punish anyone," spokesman Tom Greer said Wednesday. "It's to promote the health of all employees and contain the medical costs that we share."

Lockheed's action follows moves by several other North Texas employers who are targeting tobacco as a key culprit behind their spiraling healthcare costs. Bell Helicopter, for example, prohibits smoking as part of a broader health-promotion program. "We did what they're going to do over a year ago," Bell spokesman Mike Cox said. "There was some grumbling and some reorientation on the part of some folks. But our whole campus is smokefree now."

The parent company of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas also plans to eliminate cigarettes in November from its Richardson headquarters, as well as offices throughout Texas and three other states. "It includes inside, outside, the garage, the parking lot, everything," Blue Cross spokeswoman Margaret Jarvis said. "It includes visitors, contractors, employees, everybody that comes on our campus."

The company also plans in 2008 to begin collecting higher insurance premiums from employees who smoke. That's an increasingly common strategy, with some U.S. employers now charging smokers as much as $1,000 extra a year, said Camille Haltom, a healthcare consultant at Hewitt Associates.

Tobacco is linked to so many diseases that many companies have forbidden smoking for years in their buildings and the immediate surroundings, such as doorways. Overall, Americans spend $150 billion a year dealing with tobacco-related illnesses, said Dr. Paul Handel, Blue Cross' chief medical officer.

"If we were not spending $150 billion on the effects of smoking, what would that do in terms of helping to provide healthcare coverage for some of the uninsured?" Handel said. "What would that do to help find a cure for juvenile diabetes or lymphoma? Instead, what we are doing as a nation is we're continuing to spend the dollars chasing the effects of diseases that basically people are bringing on themselves. And we're all paying for it."

At Lockheed, employees who get caught sneaking a smoke in the parking lot will be considered violators of company policy, Greer said. "We follow a process that involves reminders, warnings for violations, and a series of progressive disciplinary steps for repeated violations," he said.

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