Will PTI become a no-smoking zone?
GREENSBORO — Our airport was once known informally as having one of the more smoker-friendly terminals in the country.
It’s a title that would seem to make sense; Piedmont Triad International Airport is arguably in the epicenter of tobacco country. If you have business at two of the nation’s largest tobacco companies — Lorillard in Greensboro, Reynolds American in Winston-Salem — PTI is your destination airport.
But beginning today, a nod to the wealth that helped build this area — the airport smokers lounge — could be at risk of ending when Guilford County’s bBoard of health takes up a policy that would eliminate smoking areas in public buildings.
The health board will discuss banning smoking from municipal buildings in Guilford County, which most municipalities have done anyway. But PTI still allows smoking in its sports bar and an adjoining lounge.
“Airport authorities are listed under local buildings, local municipal buildings,” said Mary Gillett, coordinator of the Tobacco Use Prevention Coalition of Guilford County, a sub-unit of the Guilford County Department of Public Health.
A state law allowing municipalities and health boards to determine their own smoke-free areas gives the county health department power to regulate the issue.
Attempts to reach airport authority officials for comment last week were unsuccessful.
“North Carolina is following a sort of logical progression of protecting people from secondhand smoke,” said Elisabeth Constandy, director of program development in the office for tobacco prevention and control under the state’s Division of Public Health.
Similarly, the state will ban smoking in restaurants and bars Jan 2.
The moves to ban smoking in more public places is a jolt to some in the Old North State. Then again, there’s plenty of evidence showing the dangers of smoking and secondhand smoke.
In 2006, U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona issued a report saying “nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke at home or work increase their risk of developing heart disease by 25 to 30 percent and lung cancer by 20 to 30 percent.”
But just because the state is moving away from smoking in public doesn’t mean it’s moving from being tops in tobacco production.
In 2007, the most recent figures available, tobacco production in the state added $7 billion to the economy, according to the state’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Sciences. In that year, the gross national product related to tobacco was more than $64 billion.
“To me, being from Reidsville, if it wasn’t for the area’s tobacco, there would be no Reidsville, no North Carolina,” said B.J. Slone, who sat in the airport smoking area recently with her grandson, puffing a cigarette. “It’s wrong to ban.”
Fewer people trot out that defense these days, but it’s more likely to still be heard in this part of the country, where tobacco produced money, jobs and corporations that brought arts and culture to the region.
In Winston-Salem, R.J. Reynolds has been a major employer, not to mention a supporter of arts programs and culture.
Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Reidsville, Mocksville and numerous other communities in the Piedmont are still home to cigarette manufacturing and corporate headquarters that continue to pump out smokes — and keep people in jobs such as farming, manufacturing, marketing, on and up to locally based corporate heads.
Both of the state’s U.S. senators, Kay Hagan from Greensboro and Richard Burr of Winston-Salem, recently opposed legislation that gave the Food and Drug Administration regulation over tobacco products. Their attempts failed.
Commissioner Linda Shaw, whose district includes PTI, once was a smoker and supports a ban on smoking in the terminal.
“I’ll just have to go along with what the health department advises,” she said.
Commissioner Steve Arnold is against the measure, on principle.
“I’m very opposed to government playing big brother and telling people what to do or not do and how to live or not live,” he said.
As widespread support for smoking erodes, so do the number of places outside your own home where you can still light up.
“I still smoke, and I probably shouldn’t,” said Lloyd Kelly of Pinehurst, who was at PTI one afternoon this past week, waiting on a flight to Houston.
“I’m not ready to quit,” he said.
Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt@news-record.com
Accompanying Photos
Photo Caption: Amanda Rose of Asheville in the smoking lounge at Piedmont Triad International Airport on Tuesday.
RECENT SMOKING LEGISLATION
May 19: Gov. Bev Perdue signs legislation that bans smoking from all bars and restaurants in the state, effective Jan. 2, 2010 .
June 22: President Barack Obama gives regulatory authority to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over tobacco products, meaning the government has greater control over what goes into tobacco products and how they are marketed.
Today: Guilford County’s board of health will take up a resolution that would eliminate smoking areas from municipal buildings. Most municipalities here already have such regulations, but the airport, which has two public smoking areas does not.
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