Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport will soon close all its smoking rooms. At the same time, it wants to help you stop smoking through a free nicotine lozenges.
I’m strongly of the opinion that indoor, airside smoking lounges should remain. While smoking is thankfully declining in the USA and around the world, it remains a legal and prevalent habit. To herd smokers to the curb, forcing them to endure the stress of security lines, just to smoke a cigarette, strikes me as unreasonable. It also clogs security lines for other passengers. Nearly 70% of passengers in Atlanta, a fortress hub for Delta, are connecting.
Furthermore, in my experience indoor smoking bans lead to more second hand smoke, as smokers, even 25 feet away from doors, tend to encounter more passengers than in a specially-ventillated separate room.
> Read More: Ugh…Atlanta Bans Smoking In Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
But under Atlanta’s new non-smoking ordinance, the airport must go smoke-free indoors on January 02, 2020. Smokers will be forced to exit terminals and smoke curbside during layovers.
In attempt to help travelers who might not have time to smoke, the airport will offer “complimentary nicotine replacement therapy lozenges” to passengers who do not have time for a smoke.
While Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is in full compliance with the City of Atlanta smoking ordinance and the state of Georgia’s Smoke Free Act, we realize that for many passengers, smoking is a part of their daily activity. That is why the airport will make available free, Good Sense branded, FDA approved nicotine replacement therapy lozenges for a limited time. The lozenges can be found at participating concessionaires throughout the domestic and international concourses from January 2-31, 2020.
That’s all fine and good, but Atlanta is exacerbating the smoking problem by moving it out to the curbs.
CONCLUSION
No one is arguing that people should be able to smoke in terminal restaurants or bars, let alone on airplanes. But offering a designated smoking area on the secure side of the airport is not unreasonable. Quite the contrary, it is unreasonable not to. On busy days, it would not surprise me if people are willing to risk a $200 fine to smoke in restrooms…another unintended consequences of this poorly thought-out non-smoking ordinance.
Another well meaning but ill conceived law. Do the governing bodies actually debate these things or simply insist on an instant yea or nay? Another unintended result will be that hardcore smokers connecting to another destination will now look at better options (for them) than ATL.
That leaves Washington Dulles, LAX Tom Bradley Terminal, and Miami at a special TGI Fridays sectioned bar, as the only airports in the U.S. with indoor airside smoking rooms.
Hopefully they will be banned so as well. Next up should be alcohol.
LAX is outdoors, but at least airside. Did the Salt Lake City ones close? I believe Cincinnati, Huntsville, and Las Vegas still have indoor rooms.
Nashville has a paid smoking room, Orlando-Sanford has a smoking section in the Royal Palm Lounge accessible via Priority Pass, Gulfport/Biloxi has indoor rooms too.
Sad to see them decline
SLC closed some time ago….two years I think. CVG is a paid lounge that is like $10 but includes a drink. Las Vegas I recall was in the Southwest concourse but have not been there in quite some time. It was a bar actually, not a room. The terminal where AA and others fly from there is not.
While everyone screaming for freedom of speech, why not freedom of smoking? To prohibit one but taking a profit in form of duties and taxes just… Plain stupid and hypocrite…..
The freaky zealots love to control the lives of others and in doing so, as you point out, make life worse for non smokers. Bangkok has done the same: banned indoor smoke rooms, forcing those on the gaspers to congregate outside the terminal, meaning the putrid smoke blows over everyone.
Smoking is like drinking alcohol, using drugs and eating meat: everyone knows it’s bad but people should have the freedom to choose, providing they’re not impinging on the rights of others.
Incredible that Atlanta is banning these smoking rooms at the same time that it’s literally now legal for someone to walk into the pre-security areas of the airport with semi-automatic rifles, literal weapons of war.