Smokers and non-smokers support passing legislation to permanently ban smoking on airline flights, a Utah survey shows.
Ninety-one percent of 1,423 persons interviewed at the Salt Lake International Airport favor changing the temporary ban into a permanent law. The national law would permanently prohibit smokers from lighting up at any time during a flight of two hours or less. Interestingly, 66 percent of those supporting the ban are smokers.Most of those interviewed were not Utah natives but catching connecting flights from Salt Lake City.
Eighty-eight percent of those responding support a permanent ban on smoking on all flights - regardless of how long the plane is in the air. Again, a permanent law has the majority support of smokers.
The survey, conducted by members of the Utah Society for Respiratory Care, is part of a national effort to extend the smoking ban. Absent action by U.S. Congress in 1989, the law will expire in April.
Georgine Bills, president of the respiratory society, believes the survey shows that smokers are "becoming more aware of and considerate of the risk they pose to non-smokers."
"We don't consider smokers to be bad people, rather people with a bad habit that can hinder the health of non-smokers through secondhand, environmental smoke," she said.
The idea of "smokers' rights" was created by the Tobacco Institute, she contends.
"Anyone should have the right to indulge in any activity that is not detrimental to others who don't also wish to participate," she said. "But as a non-smoker on an airplane, you become a `smoker' whether you want to or not - whether you're in a non-smoking area or not."
Unlike a train where a non-smoking car can be completely separate from smokers, everyone on a plane is exposed to the health hazards related to smoking. "As long as we allow smoking anywhere on the plane, non-smokers will be inhaling the smoke," she said.
The Tobacco Institute has run full-page advertisements in Sunday newspapers throughout the country refuting the ill-affects of side-stream, or secondhand smoke, Bills says.
But Walker Merryman, vice president of the Tobacco Institute in Washington, D.C., denied campaigning to defeat the legislation that bans smoking on airlines.
He told the Deseret News that the Department of Transportation is conducting scientific surveys to determine if there are "any health hazards" to non-smokers as a result of environmental smoke.
Many of the symptoms passengers attribute to smoke irritation, such as itchy eyes and dry throat, could be caused by poor ventilation or low humidity on the aircraft, Merryman said.
The results of the Utah survey are suspect because it was conducted by a respiratory society with a built-in bias, he contends.
Since the smoking ban became effective, the transportation department has received more than 6,000 letters from people objecting to the ban and less than 100 from those who endorse it, Merryman said.
Bills, however, is confident the transportation department's investigation will come to the same conclusion multiple other studies have reached: Inhaling secondhand smoke is clearly a health hazard.
Studies show that if a non-smoker lives for 10 years with a smoker who smokes one pack of cigarettes a day, the non-smoker will experience the same loss of lung function as if he had smoked a half a pack a day over that time.
"I'm a respiratory therapist," said Bills. "After seeing the ravaging affects of smoking on someone's body, I have no tolerance for smoking on airplanes. Non-smokers have the right to be protected."