Elders Backs Ban on Smoke in U.S. Public Buildings

U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders and five of her predecessors added their endorsement Monday to a Clinton Administration-backed plan to protect Americans from the dangers of second-hand cigarette smoke by severely restricting smoking in most of the nation’s public buildings.

Legislation introduced by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) would prohibit smoking in non-residential buildings used regularly by more than 10 people unless separately ventilated rooms are provided for smokers.

The proposal has been roundly denounced by the tobacco industry, which contends that it is based on studies that misrepresent the effects of second-hand smoke.

Waxman’s subcommittee on health and the environment--part of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce--conducted a hearing Monday on the bill, known as the Smoke-Free Environment Act of 1993.

Last year, an Environmental Protection Agency study identified second-hand smoke as a deadly carcinogen and blamed it for 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually in adults and as many as 300,000 cases of bronchitis and pneumonia in children.

EPA Administrator Carol Browner testified that the bill could save from 5,000 to 9,000 lives of nonsmokers annually and save from $1.5 billion to $3 billion in medical costs and lost wages each year.

The gathering of Elders and the former surgeons general--Antonia Coello Novello, C. Everett Koop, Julius B. Richmond, S. Paul Ehrlich and Jesse L. Steinfeld--marked the first time that they had met to support a single piece of legislation.

“This is not a question of the human or civil right to do what you want, when you want,” said Elders. “This is a question of protecting our children from an out-and-out peril.”

Added Koop, an ardent campaigner against smoking in the Administration of former President Ronald Reagan: “It is my judgment that the time for delay is past. . . . Measures to protect the public health are required now.”

But Tobacco Institute consultant Charles O. Whitley said that testimony favoring a ban on smoking in public buildings is based on old reports and questionable EPA studies.

“Such massive federal intervention in the private lives and choices of one-quarter of our adult population recalls the extremism of Prohibition, the last national crusade against a supposed social evil,” Whitley said.

Introduced last November, the bill is in the early stages of subcommittee debate. Waxman expressed confidence that the bill eventually will pass, despite heavy lobbying by the tobacco industry.