A Smoke-Free Lambert?

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, Mayor Slay posted a statement on his blog regarding the City's to-be-enacted smoke-free law and St. Louis Lambert International Airport.  The City's law does not exempt the airport while the County's law does.  The City owns the airport but it is located in the County.

Mayor Slay believes the airport should be smoke-free.  So do we. 

A bit of a media frenzy has ensued the last few days over the possibility of a smoke-free Lambert.  The airport's current director, who's leaving at the end of this year, claims removing the smoking lounges inside the airport will result in a security issue and leave many smokers outside the doors of the airport.  This line of reasoning is sort of silly when you consider the airports that are already 100% smoke-free across the country, especially those that are MUCH more busy than Lambert. 

There are now at least 150 smoke-free airports in the U.S.  Including Chicago O'Hare, JFK, La Guardia, Phoenix, LAX, Orlando, Las Vegas, Houston, Nashville, Seattle, Philadelphia, Kansas City, BWI, etc...  In fact, 21 of the nation's 30 busiest airports are 100% smoke-free indoors.

When visitors to our fair city step into our airport, indoor smoking shouldn't be what greets them.

Background on Smoking & Airports:
An interesting bit of history on smoking and airports - an internal tobacco industry document from the Tobacco Institute in 1991 details the industry's "Airport Strategy Plan". As part of this plan, the tobacco industry met with staff from the American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE) and helped the Association draft "An Airport Executive's Guide to Smoking Policies in Public Airports". The industry also targeted 43 airports (Lambert is one of them) for the provision of ventilation experts to convince the airports' executives that proper ventilation is better than smoking restrictions or bans.  

Full 6 Page Document here:  http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/zgb62f00/pdf;jsessionid=6689073F33BF73705A03F37D59171F42