TOBACCO CAN'T COUNT ON HELP FROM CONGRESS

POLITICS

Shifting public attitudes toward smoking mean that it's passe on Capitol
Hill.

WASHINGTON You know it will be a busy day on the House floor when you see
ita partially smoked cigar resting on a marble fireplace ledge in the
speaker's lobby just off the floor of the House.

The cigar belongs to Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, RN.Y., who keeps it there to
enjoy as he waits between votes in the chamber.

Such overt signs of tobacco use in Congress are increasingly rare. As
Congress takes up the $368.5 billion tobacco agreement, the tobacco
companies can no longer count on help from a large cadre of members who smoke.

Smoking has long been associated with power; the "smokefilled room" once
was the symbol of closeddoor dealmaking.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, RUtah, a passionate antismoking crusader and a key
player in congressional consideration of the tobacco settlement, says that
when he chaired the Labor and Human Resources Committee in the early 1980s,
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, DMass., "used to smoke cigars and blow smoke in my
direction" until he realized that Hatch would not be provoked.

Ironically, Hatch land Kennedy this year teamed up to push an increase in
the cigarette tax to pay for expanded child health insurance. Kennedy still
smokes an occasional cigar.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Bob Smith, ROre., a chain smoker for
40 years until he quit more than a year ago, remembers large groups of
members smoking behind the brass railing at the back of the House chamber.
"We all used to gather and it used to be loaded" with members, he says.
"Now there's only two or three."

Rep. Harold Rogers, RKy., a cigar smoker, says, "When I came here in 1980,
I smoked a pipe. I smoked at every Energy and Commerce subcommittee and
full committee meeting I was in, and no one paid any attention, That's a
nono now."

The remaining smokers in Congress are sensitive about it. Several members
declined to discuss their habit on the record for this story.

Boehlert attributes this skittishness to the change in perceptions of what
smoking says about a person. "So many of us started because we thought it
was macho," he says. "No longer do I associate it with strength. I
associate it with weakness."

This shift in attitude has changed where and when members smoke in the
Capitol complex. The Senate has barred smoking on the floor since 1913,
though the chamber still sports spittoons.

The House began limiting smoking to certain areas on the floor in 1986, and
in 1990 banned smoking on the floor entirely. In 1995, that ban was
explicitly extended to the area behind the brass railing, though a standing
ashtray remains there, and members can still be seen smoking there on
occasion.

Each member of Congress determines the smoking policy in his or her office,
and each committee make its own rules. Few panels ban the practice, largely
because smokers, sensitive to their declining clout, no longer try to smoke
at meetings.

But those changes are not enough for Rep. Earl Blumenauer, DOre. He has
sponsored a resolution that would ban smoking in and around the House
chamber, including the two parties' cloakrooms, the Speaker's lobby and the
Rayburn room, just off the House floor.

Blumenauer says it's time for the House to catch up with the rest of
America in terms of smoking regulations in terms of smoking regulations in
the workplace. "We have 16yearold volunteer pages" who are exposed to
secondhand smoke, he says. He says many members have told him they are
"sick about how we treat our employees and the face we present to the public."

It is even more important now with the tobacco settlement in question.

"What sort of credibility do we have if we can't do what the rest of
America has managed to do in terms of dealing with tobacco in the
workplace?" he said.

WASHINGTONYou know it will be a busy day on the House floor