Although Weyco’s CEO has responded to critics that sole purpose of policy is to create a smoke-free and healthy work environment, many believe that policy was drafted as an obvious excuse to cut down Weyco’s medical and insurance costs. Critics argue that this policy is a discrimination against lifestyle choices, and an invasion of privacy, as it allows company to have a say in what its employees do outside work. Many are understandably worried that this policy will serve as a launching platform for many other potentially discriminating policies in future.

Following logic of this policy, if sole purpose is to create a “healthy” work environment, as it has been justified, companies should be allowed to force their obese employees to lose weight. After all, excessive eating and obesity are health risks as serious as those caused by tobacco usage. Perhaps some companies would even be arrogant and pervasive enough to provide an arbitrary list of what “can” and “cannot” be eaten with another list in fineprint of “what” can be eaten “where” at “what time” of day.

After any chemical reaction between atoms, (which of course all matter that exists is mad up of), protons and electrons move into a position where their energies are of equal value. As far as I know all religions and belief systems held by human beings state that to find enlightenment or peace one has to experience all necessary feelings and emotions integral to living a full life. This means that one has to experience both suffering and joy to truly gain knowledge about what it means to be alive. If you run from your feelings, you are not walking 'middle path' and therefore you're destined to have an imbalance in terms of gaining wisdom and happiness.

Let's look at a few occurrences that happen regularly in life of our Universe. How about process of a star exploding out in space? One might believe that this happening is a negative one, especially if it is our Sun that we are talking about, as this will mean end of life on our world. But what happens when a star explodes? It has been understood that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only move from one place to another. Therefore, once our Sun explodes, hopefully many billion years from now, energy will travel out into space only to conglomerate and converge once again to form new stars and subsequent life. Even if energy of our Sun just dissipates back into general energy of space we can perceive this as a balanced equation in respect that it is that exact space that our Sun evolved from in first place.