Should health organisations hire smokers? (moral, moral, Article)

[tcprowling]

The World Health Organisation introduced a policy in 2005 of no longer recruiting people who smoke or otherwise ingest tobacco.
University of Sydney public health professor Simon Chapman is not happy about it. Chapman is a long-time crusader against tobacco but is quoted in an article in The Australian Financial Review today ("Stubbing out basic values in fight against smoking") as saying that while:

... he passionately wants to see smoking eradicated, he says some [of] the measures now being taken in the battle against smoking are extreme and have no place in ethical public health conduct....
Being the leading health agency in the world, WHO is a highly symbolic employer and Chapman says this sort of message is insensitive to the rights of the individual. It implies that not smoking is more important than anything else.
He could understand if WHO did not want a smoker working in tobacco control just as a sun cancer campaign would not want to employ someone who was deeply tanned and never wore a hat, but he says the blanket policy is going too far.
As a local example, he points to Sydney's Mosman Council, which is trying to ban smoking in outdoor settings such as parks and beaches.
Chapman is opposed to banning smoking outdoors and says that there is no scientific proof that smoking in parks poses any serious risk to publichealth. He thinks the council has confused the litter issue with the health issue.
"As we have become more successful, our success has encouraged some extreme elements whho are essentialy moralists, who don't even like the sight of smoking, to start inserting their values," he says.

Chapman is also against the growing ban on people being shown smoking in movies. He says, "I cannot support... a film about a self-destructive character being allowed to engage in every conceivable form of self-absorbed, anti-social behaviour except for smoking."
He adds, "If it is acceptable to [censor the sight of people] smoking, surely it is acceptable to do it about obesity or racism too, and censor all depictions of them."
Is he right? Or is WHO right?

[Booko]

He could understand if WHO did not want a smoker working in tobacco control just as a sun cancer campaign would not want to employ someone who was deeply tanned and never wore a hat, but he says the blanket policy is going too far.

Yes, I think it goes too far in that it doesn't acknowledge the very addictive nature of nicotine.

Chapman is opposed to banning smoking outdoors and says that there is no scientific proof that smoking in parks poses any serious risk to publichealth.

I don't need scientific proof. All I need to do is sit on a nice bench in a public park and have someone sit next to me and smoke. Too late for me -- I'll be having a migraine for the next 1-3 days.

I tried to bring my kids to the county fair a couple of years ago. We paid lots of cash to get in this "public" area. You can smoke anywhere but on the rides. We stayed an hour and then we had to go home.

Sorry, I'm for *limiting* areas for smoking in public places. I don't think we need to ban it altogether though. That's too extreme. If the areas for smoking are marked, I'll just stay away from them -- no problem.