Vote Set on Total Airline Smoking Ban : Senators From Tobacco States Gird for Showdown

Senate supporters of a proposed smoking ban on all airline flights today scheduled a Thursday vote aimed at stopping tobacco state lawmakers from blocking the legislation.

Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop told congressmen Americans shouldn’t let minors buy cigarettes from vending machines any more than they would tolerate machines selling liquor to anyone with the correct change.

The airline smoking vote was scheduled by Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) after opponents of the ban threatened to hold up unrelated spending bills unless a compromise is reached.

Tobacco state senators had said earlier that rather than the stronger restrictions, they would accept a permanent ban on smoking aboard airline flights of two hours or less.

“We’re willing to make that permanent,” Sen. Wendell H. Ford (D-Ky.) said of the current smoking ban on two-hour flights, which is due to expire next April.

But he said he will continue opposing a provision permanently extending the ban to all flights, language that is part of a bill providing $11.9 billion for next year’s federal transportation programs.

Would Delay Approval

“This one will take basically a week to get through,” Ford said of the transportation bill. That would delay approval of other spending legislation awaiting Senate approval, he said.

But the author of the permanent smoking prohibition on all flights, Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), continued to defend his measure and called on opponents of the ban to let work on the bill proceed.

“If they have a case to make they ought to make it and let us vote on it,” Lautenberg said.

The House voted Aug. 3 to make the ban on two-hour flights permanent.

Koop said vending machines give youngsters easy access to tobacco and send a message that this country isn’t worried that they will become addicted.

“There is no logical reason why we should have a double standard for controlling the sale of tobacco and alcohol, the two major legal addicting drugs used in our society,” he told a congressional hearing.

“Would we tolerate the sale of alcoholic beverages through vending machines? Would we allow free samples of alcoholic beverages to be sent through the mail or passed out on public property? Of course not,” he said.