Surgeon General Endorses Legislation to Limit Smoking in Federal Buildings

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, citing medical evidence that “passive smoke” can increase the risk of cancer to nonsmokers, Tuesday endorsed legislation that would restrict smoking in all federal buildings to designated areas.

Koop told a Senate subcommittee that the bill, sponsored by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), “not only protects the nonsmoker but encourages the smoker to stop.”

However, opponents of the measure, including representatives of the tobacco industry, argued that the no-smoking rules would be expensive to implement.

Under the bill, smoking would be restricted to certain areas in all federal buildings, with the exception of military installations. Signs would be posted designating these areas, and violators could be fined $50 to $500.

Koop said evidence indicates that passive smoke, which is inhaled by nonsmokers, contains many of the cancer-causing particles that smokers themselves breathe--and in some cases at higher concentrations. For example, he said, passive smoke contains 70% more tar and 250% more carbon monoxide than so-called “mainstream smoke.”

In addition, Koop said, 12 of 15 recent studies worldwide have shown a significant correlation between passive smoke and cancer. Thus, he argued, protection for nonsmokers is “adequately justified in the scientific literature.”

After the hearing of the Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee on civil service, post office and general services, Koop said that the legislation would help reach his goal of a “smoke-free society” by the year 2000.

But critics of the bill, including Robert Tollison of the Tobacco Institute, the industry’s lobbying group, argued that the apparent links between passive smoke and cancer are inconclusive. He said that “the substantial costs on this country’s taxpayers” needed to put the no-smoking rules into effect would not be warranted.

Tollison estimated that the costs in lost productivity from allowing “smoking breaks” and in putting up the no-smoking signs could total $500 million.

Studies by the National Center for Health Statistics show that one third of the U.S. adult population smokes but that the percentage is declining. Twenty-one states, including California, limit smoking in state buildings or during public meetings, and Los Angeles is among 32 California cities that restrict smoking in municipal buildings.