This isn’t a news flash for most people who come to this blog, this Web site, or who read Workforce Management magazine, but a New York Times story today announced that American businesses are working overtime trying to get their workers to stop smoking.

As the Times has discovered, “Many businesses are seeking to reduce their medical bills by paying for programs to help employees stop smoking. A decade ago, such programs were rare. But recent surveys indicate that one-third of companies with at least 200 workers now offer smoking cessation as part of their employee benefits package. Among the nation’s biggest companies, the number may be nearly two-thirds of employers.” The story goes on to quote Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, who says that “Tobacco cessation has been the hot topic for the last year.”

If all of this sounds vaguely familiar it’s because it is. We’ve written about it here at Workforce since at least 2004 “Health Risk Appraisals Address Employees’ Individual Problems,” in 2005 when the stop employee smoking movement started in the public sector (“States Hit Public Employees With Smoking Surcharge”) and in numerous other articles including “Being Healthy May Be its Own Reward, But a Little Cash Can Also Help Keep Workers Fit” and “Employer to Fine Unhealthy Workers.”

In fact, the workplace stop-smoking movement has gotten to be so common that we’ve even written about the next step in the health-monitoring process: battling employee obesity (“Will the Obese Be Penalized by Insurers Like Smokers?“)

“For businesses, it is a bottom-line calculus,” the Times story says of the smoking cessation trend.

“Spending as much as $900 or so to give a participant free nicotine patches and drugs to ease withdrawal, as well as phone sessions with smoking addiction counselors, can more than offset the estimated $16,000 or more in additional lifetime medical bills that a typical smoker generates, according to federal health data. That federal figure does not count the costs of absenteeism or the drain on productivity when smokers periodically duck outside for a cigarette.”

Oddly enough, stories like this one–although common knowledge to people in management, HR and the business world who have been paying attention–don’t become big news in many quarters until a newspaper of record like the The New York Times figures out what a lot of people already know and publishes a “news” story. And because the Times is one of those media outlets that helps sets the agenda for everyone else, my guess is that the big push to get employees to stop smoking will be something you’ll be hearing about a lot in the days and weeks to come (on local TV news programs, for instance, who tend to let print do their research for them).

Just remember one thing–you probably read about it here first.