They Must Use Designated Areas : Smoking Curbs for Federal Employees Effective Today

Federal employees will be permitted to smoke only in designated areas under new smoking regulations taking effect today.

The new rules affect 890,000 employees in the 6,800 buildings owned or leased nationwide by the General Services Administration.

The old rules required special sections for nonsmokers. Everywhere else, smoking was allowed.

Now, the emphasis has shifted in favor of the 70% of the employees who reportedly don’t smoke. Offices, corridors, meeting rooms and public areas will be presumed to be no-smoking areas unless signs are posted saying otherwise.

However, the rules provide each agency with enough leeway to be miserly or generous with space allocated to smokers.

Smoking in Corridors

The Interior Department is leaving the decision to each office and is designating the corridors in its headquarters building in Washington as smoking areas.

The approach of the Agriculture Department, according to Assistant Secretary for Administration John J. Franke Jr., “is not to make a fuss.” Smoking prohibitions for office space will apply only to “bullpen areas”; officials with enough rank to have their own offices will make their own decision, he said.

The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, which declared itself smoke-free on Jan. 1, allows no smoking in offices and provides only a few designated smoking areas, among them an outdoor catwalk.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which has responsibility for outdoor air quality, will ensure the indoor air quality by banning smoking in all work areas, including private offices.

Freedom for Administrators

The final rules provide individual agencies with more discretion than the original GSA proposal, agency Administrator Terence C. Golden acknowledged. But, he said, the rules were produced after discussions among the agencies affected, employee groups and the Office of Personnel Management, which was pushing for maximum freedom for individual administrators.

“I think it represents dramatic progress between where we were and where we are today,” he said, predicting the emergence of a consensus for stricter rules, with health agencies leading the way.

Although the new guidelines were announced two months ago, many government offices, including the White House and the Veterans Administration, are still formulating their plans.

Other agencies, such as the Education Department, will not have to adjust much to comply, largely because of policies already in place.

Brennan Moran, a spokeswoman for the Tobacco Institute, which lobbies for tobacco companies, called the GSA rules “the wrong answer for the wrong problem.”

“Two percent of (indoor) air quality problems stem from smoking. The rest stem from causes like bad ventilation, bacteria and fungus,” she said.