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With no doubt this question may be considered as contensious by many and I wish that all smokers could manage to quit smoking right now but bear with me. A few weeks ago I happened to be going through London Heathrow Airport, but were held over for 1 night and needed to stay in a hotel. Seeing some cigarette smokers outside and being in no hurry to board a shuttle bus for my hotel for the night I decided I would ask them their point of view on smoking bans in airports. The answers given were suprising and insightful.
Each of them stated they saw no problem with the anti-smoking laws in their day to day life and find no problem with popping outside for a smoke at restaraunts, bars, or at work, and so on. However they do have a problem in that there is no place in the departure lounge at large airports and I started to sympathize.
I was informed by most of them to consider the fact that they might have had to take long-haul flight and then having to take another long flight. Thus if they wanted to, stepping out for a cigarette they were faced with quite a difficulty. To start with exit the secure area as well as they may be required to deal with passport and border control. Then somewhere to have a cigarette has to be located. Then after finishing their cigarette it is neccesary to go through airport security and perhaps another experience with passport and border control, all the while lugging their carry-on bags around.
I began to think, why not set aside an area to smoke past security like there were before? There used to be some good ones having good ventilation systems along with negative air pressure. These systems worked so well that you had to be sitting facing them to smell the odor of smoke. A better idea still would be to design an open air area to have a cigarette. On one of my trips I had a stop in the Miami Airport I saw a novel smoking area in the departure area. It was an atrium in the open air but still inside the secure area of departures. So couldn't we construct something like this like a balcony?
As air terminals are a different situation and different from our usual daily life can't we find it within ourselves to cut the smokers a little slack?
Make your voice heard in our poll could we quit smoking restrictions in international airports.
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