As the airport mulls reopening smoking lounges, some smokers are puffing on the sly.
By JEAN HELLER
Published September 5, 2003
TAMPA - Passengers at Tampa International Airport aren't letting the new Florida indoor smoking ban come between them and their cigarettes.
"They're hiding it, smoking in the restrooms," said Louis Miller, executive director of the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority. "It's particularly bad at the airsides. At the landside terminal, they can step outside and smoke. There is no place to step outside once you're down in the gate areas."
Miller made the disclosure Thursday after representatives of the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association objected to plans to reopen the airport's smoking lounges, which were closed after an indoor smoking ban took effect July 1.
"This is very disconcerting to us, and we wanted to come and state our objections," Paul Hull, a vice president of the American Cancer Society's Florida division, told the aviation authority.
Miller said no decisions have been made and no action will be taken without board approval.
"We are working with the Department of Business and Professional Regulation to see what our options are," said Miller, who quit smoking 11 months ago.
The airport's eight smoking rooms, now padlocked, are ventilated separately from the rest of the facility. The air from those rooms never mingles with other air in the terminal and at the airsides.
The smoking rooms are preferable to the situation now, Miller said, where people sneak cigarettes in the restrooms and pollute air breathed by nonsmokers.
"We don't have enough police officers to cover every restroom," Miller said. "The objective of the law is to keep smokers and nonsmokers apart. When smokers sneak it, smoke is getting into the terminals."
But in a letter to Miller, executives of the three health groups wrote:
"... We are concerned that a public authority such as the HCAA is petitioning another government entity for the creation of what could most charitably be called a loophole in an overwhelmingly popular law. We are concerned that public funds are being expended by HCAA for its staff to figure out a way to skirt the law and allow people illegitimate relief from a public law."
There is an exception in the Florida statute for retail tobacco shops. Miller's idea is to put cigarette vending machines in the smoking rooms to qualify them for that exemption. To prevent minors from using the machines, they would be operated with tokens purchased from newsstands where customers would be screened by age.
Miller began to consider relief for smokers as complaints piled up from passengers who couldn't find a place to light up.
"Statistics say that 12 to 16 percent of the adult population still smokes," Miller said in an interview last month, when he disclosed that he was working with the state on the question. "If you've got 15 percent of your customers unhappy, that's a lot."
For an individual, the penalty for violating the state statute is a fine of up to $100 for a first offense and up to $500 for subsequent violations. The establishment where the violation occurs is subject to a fine of up to $500 for a first offense. If a second violation occurs within two years of the first, the fine is not less than $500 and not more than $2,000.
