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SANTA FE, N.M. — Tobacco users got a reprieve Wednesday when a state Senate committee voted overwhelmingly to table a bill that would have allowed health care organizations to refuse to hire tobacco users.

“What next?” Senate President Pro-Tem Mary Kay Papen, D-Las Cruces, asked in reference to the proposal.

She and others ventured that it would be the start of a slippery slope that could eventually let employers discriminate against hiring people who were obese or who rode motorcycles without helmets.”This thing smells of big daddy,” said Sen John Sapien, D-Corrales, who made the motion to table the bill.SB 243, sponsored by Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, would exempt from the Employee Privacy Act healthcare organizations and nonprofits whose mission is to help people stop using tobacco. The 1991 law made it illegal for New Mexico employers to refuse to hire a smoker or to require that an employee abstain from using tobacco products during working hours.

The bill was pushed by Presbyterian Healthcare Services and supported by the New Mexico Hospital Association, as well as business groups including the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce and the Association of Commerce and Industry.

Representatives from those organizations spoke at the Senate Corporations and Transportation Committee hearing, saying the bill gave healthcare-related employers the option not to have employees who used tobacco, something that has been directly proven to cause lung cancer and numerous other diseases.

Presbyterian President and CEO Jim Hinton said 21 states have such laws. ACI President and CEO Beverlee McClure said some of her organization’s members outside the healthcare field expressed a desire to be included in the exemption.

However, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network opposed the bill. Society representative Sandra Adonkakis said not hiring smokers wasn’t a proven way to help them quit the habit.

Sens. William Sharer, R-Farmington, and Lee Cotter, R-Las Cruces, said they were for freedom of choice but were concerned the proposal would be too intrusive into employees’ private lives.

Sapien said the committee’s action means the bill is dead for this session.