House Votes to Extend Ban on Smoking to Almost All Domestic Airline Flights

The House voted Tuesday to ban smoking aboard virtually all domestic airline flights, a toughening of restrictions that tobacco supporters were unable to head off.

“Today, millions of Americans who have lost loved ones from tobacco-related diseases are the real winners,” said the measure’s sponsor, Rep. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.).

The provision forbids cigarette smoking on all flights within the continental United States and on all routes to and from Alaska and Hawaii scheduled for six hours or less.

The airline industry says there are 17,500 daily domestic flights. Durbin said 24 flights to Alaska and Hawaii and four to Guam would not be covered.

The prohibition was part of a compromise House-Senate bill providing $12 billion for transportation programs for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 and $3.2 billion for anti-drug efforts.

Lawmakers adopted the smoking ban language on a voice vote and planned to finish work on the overall bill today. The Senate must consider the measure before offering it to President Bush, who is expected to sign it.

Tobacco-state lawmakers and other opponents of the smoking ban, realizing they were outnumbered, offered little resistance.

Opponents largely confined their remarks to complaints that Congress should have waited for a Transportation Department study of airline cabin air quality, due early next year. Tobacco supporters have argued that cigarette smoke is but one pollutant in cabin air, which is recirculated in flight.

“The fervor surrounding this issue has created the widespread but mistaken impression that just banning smoking is the sole and complete solution to the cabin air quality problem,” said Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

The House voted 259 to 169 on Aug. 2 to make permanent the ban on smoking on flights lasting two hours or less. On Sept. 14, the Senate voted 77 to 21 to end delaying tactics by lawmakers trying to block a permanent ban on all flights. The version considered Tuesday was a compromise.

With such strong votes against them, tobacco lobbyists said it made little sense to fight.

“There are other issues that will come up that are at least as important,” said Walker Merryman, spokesman for the Tobacco Institute, the cigarette industry’s trade group. “We’ll just keep our powder dry.”

The tobacco industry has been focusing its energy on avoiding an increase in the excise tax on cigarettes and on fighting off new restrictions on advertising.

Durbin and his allies argued that nonsmokers can get cancer and lung and respiratory diseases by breathing cigarette smoke. They have been backed by a legion of health associations and unions representing airline employees.

Under current law, cigarette smoking is forbidden on domestic flights lasting two hours or less, a ban covering four-fifths of all routes. It is due to expire in April. The broader prohibition would take effect 96 days after it is signed into law.

The new rules cover all flights between the West Coast and Hawaii and Alaska because they last less than six hours. They also cover flights between the continental United States and Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.