Congress: One of the last smokers' havens in U.S.

WASHINGTON — When Rep. Charlie Norwood was diagnosed with a chronic lung disease a few years back, he followed the orders of his wife, Gloria, and gave up red meat, chewing tobacco and his favorite cigars.

But that didn't save the Georgia Republican — recently recovered from a lung transplant and hooked up to an oxygen tank — from being shrouded with cigarette smoke recently as he parked his scooter chair in the Speaker's Lobby outside the House floor.

Norwood doesn't smoke anymore, but several of his congressional colleagues do, defiantly and unapologetically, making the U.S. Congress one of the few and possibly the most famous indoor workplaces in the country where it's still legal to light up.

The District of Columbia City Council passed a law that will make indoor work sites, bars and restaurants smoke-free by next January. The notable exception is Congress, where tobacco leaves dot the frescoes and knee-high ashtrays stand outside the House chamber.

And it's not likely to change any time soon, given that newly elected House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, is a chain smoker. Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, his predecessor, has been spotted spitting Skoal into a little plastic cup on the House floor.

It's not that smoking on the Hill hasn't been restricted over the years. Once, they puffed away with abandon. Today, they limit themselves to certain areas: in their offices, the Rayburn building cafeteria and, most notoriously, the ornate, red-carpeted Speaker's Lobby, where reporters and lobbyists buttonhole members passing through to vote.

That's where Norwood was caught in the cloud that an aide says he didn't complain about, but where a lighted cigarette passed so close to his oxygen tank that one observer worried the whole place might go up in flames.

"I can't go in there. If I have to go in, I have to get out. It's very unfair," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., a crusader for nonsmokers' rights.

Nonsmokers at the Capitol have tried — bureaucratically and creatively — to banish tobacco from this historic place. Requests to do so routinely are ignored.

A few years back, someone tried stealing the ashtrays — the big heavy ones filled with sand. Learning that cigarettes were sold from unregulated vending machines and in congressional snack shops (at a reduced price, no less), Waxman staged a sting, arranging for minors to buy them, which they did.

Waxman recently requested an investigation into why Congress isn't made to comply with the laws that govern much of the rest of country. Americans as a whole have sided with nonsmokers. A dozen states have passed smoke-free-air laws; so have many individual cities. Indeed, Boehner cannot smoke in businesses in Columbus, his home state's capital.

Flouting its host city's new smoking ban could enhance the impression that Congress holds itself above its citizenry. It is, after all, immune from the Freedom of Information Act and many federal civil-rights and labor laws.

The Republicans have made the Capitol a friendlier place for tobacco since they claimed the majority. No more calling the heads of the seven major tobacco companies to defend their practices under oath, as Waxman did in 1994. Rep. Roy Blunt, No. 3 in the GOP leadership, is married to a lobbyist for the parent company of industry giant Philip Morris.

Nonetheless, there has been a perceptible change in Washington attitude, if not Washington policy, as the nation scorns tobacco and fewer adults indulge.

It's difficult to tally how many members of Congress actually smoke, as not all who do will acknowledge it. Seldom are they photographed with cigarette in hand (a strategy mastered by Jackie Kennedy, a closet smoker).

"None of your business," Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., barked when asked what brand of cigar he smoked as he hurried from the Speaker's Lobby one night last week.

Boehner once was scolded for passing out tobacco-industry campaign checks on the House floor; today his aides get jumpy when asked what brand he smokes. For nonsmokers who work on Capitol Hill, the issue is mostly a matter of public health: a worker's right to clean air.

"Congress is on the wrong side of history on this. There is an opportunity today to provide a safe and healthy environment to all workers at the Capitol," said Paul Billings, a lobbyist for the American Lung Association, who has experienced firsthand the resolve of tobacco-friendly members.

"They've sat there and blown smoke in my face," he said.

But there is also the matter of the public treasures, Billings noted. The Capitol is graced with oil paintings, sculptures, antiques and chandeliers that no self-respecting museum curator would expose to smoke.

And for good reason, it appears.

When a team of conservators restored the murals and molding on the walls of Speaker's Lobby in the late 1980s, the brown stains of nicotine were among the biggest headaches.