The employer smells cigarette smoke on the job applications that arrive in the mail. Instant red flag. The smoke-scented envelopes carry with them all sort of worries about these prospective employees.

Will they cost the company more money? U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data indicates that employees who smoke use more health benefits and have higher absentee rates than nonsmoking employees.

Will they go postal? Smokers are more likely to be depressed and suffer other mental illnesses than nonsmokers.

Will they be undisciplined? Though most people understand that smoking is one of the hardest addictions to overcome, the bias exists that smokers lack willpower.

Smoking, once a glamorous habit, is now associated with negative characteristics. The employer might not even realize that the negative imagery is influencing the decision whether to hire candidates who smoke, but it’s all part of the hiring game.

People living in poverty smoke in greater numbers than middle- and upper-middle-class folks. To get out of poverty, people need jobs. But applicants who smoke often face huge disadvantages; some companies ban them outright.

So helping people in poverty kick the habit makes sense. Washington state will now pay for smoke-cessation drugs for 160,000 Medicaid recipients. The drugs work for only about one-third of smokers, regardless of the smoker’s socio-economic status. Whether the state’s effort will result in fewer smokers among the poor remains to be seen. And it needs to be measured. Experimental programs often sound good in theory but fall short in outcomes.

The campaign allows state health workers to focus on the connections between smoking and poverty and better understand the habit’s ripple effects in the lives of the poor. Children born to mothers who smoke can face long-term physical and mental health challenges. Smoking causes and exacerbates pricey medical conditions, such as diabetes and cancer. And heavy smoking can be a signal that depression and other emotional illnesses remain untreated. Finally, parents who smoke raise children at greater risk to take up the habit.

In 2008, life as a nonsmoker is less expensive for the individual. If the state’s poorer residents can kick the smoking habit, it will be much less expensive for every taxpayer.