On Friday SSM Health Care will start a policy of not hiring smokers in Missouri.Job applicants will be asked online if they’ve used tobacco products in the most recent six months and if the answer is yes, they will be told thanks, but no thanks. We’re not talking merely about a ban on smoking on hospital grounds. SSM already did that in 2004. This is a ban on tobacco use of any kind, anywhere — including, for example, weekends in your own backyard.”We want to have a healthy work force to care for our patients,” says SSM spokesman Chris Sutton. “We are in the business of health care. It is our job and our role to keep people healthy.”

Will graphic images of corpses, cancer-ridden lungs and a guy exhaling smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his neck cause smokers to quit?That’s the question after the Food and Drug Administration last week said it will begin requiring tobacco marketers to cover the top half of cigarette boxes and 20 percent of tobacco advertisements with nine bluntly graphic anti-smoking images beginning late next year.The goal is to slash consumption of cigarettes among the nation’s 43 million smokers and prevent millions more, especially teens, from starting.

Teens, minorities and low-income populations are more likely to purchase menthol cigarettes, according to a Stanford study reported Friday.A study published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research by the Stanford School of Medicine revealed increased tobacco company advertisements and lowered prices of menthol cigarettes in areas highly populated with young African American students.Researchers wanted to compare the relationship between tobacco company marketing and community demographics.

The village is initiating a new tobacco-free policy to promote health of residents using local parks.Mayor Gerald Seymour Jr. said officials recognize that use of tobacco products in proximity of children, youth and adults engaging in or watching recreational activities is unhealthy and detrimental to the health of others, and that tobacco products are often discarded on the ground, thus posing a risk of ingestion to toddlers and causing a litter problem.

The University of Southern Indiana will become smoke-free Friday.Use of tobacco products were prohibited under the university’s previous policy, except in personal vehicles and in designated outdoor spaces in the student housing areas.The new policy eliminates those exceptions. It applies to all vehicles and properties USI owns, operates and leases. A website, usi.edu/tobaccofree, lists the new policy and provides more information.”This new policy is a step forward in providing a clean, healthy working and learning environment for everyone in the campus community,” President Linda Bennett said in a news release.

I’VE NEVER thought of the Food and Drug Administration as being an especially smart or effective organization. But with the introduction of nasty graphics on cigarette packages (“Cigarette warnings getting graphic,’’ Metro, June 22), the FDA will manage to do what no one else in government has been able to do: namely, create jobs. In fact, they’ll create an entire industry.

At least one Whitehorse senior is accusing a local grocery store of invading his privacy by scanning his photo identification before selling him cigarettes.Kenyon Bennett, 76, said the Real Canadian Superstore in Whitehorse does not sell tobacco products to seniors — even if they have white hair and wrinkles — without an ID check.

The Louisiana Legislature wrapped up an election-year session Thursday by giving final approval to the $3.9 billion state construction budget and a constitutional amendment that extends a 4-cent cigarette tax and reshuffles tobacco-settlement dollars .The actions capped a two-month lawmaking period where legislators reached agreement on a $25 billion budget and a host of tax breaks but rejected Gov. Bobby Jindal’s plans for selling state prisons and merging two New Orleans public colleges.