Assembly gives Airport approval to control smoking near the terminal

The airport has installed two smoking areas farther from the entrances.
The airport has installed two smoking areas farther from the entrances. (Photo by Heather Bryant/KTOO)

The Juneau International Airport is moving smokers further away from the terminal.

The Assembly last night (Monday) amended the Second-Hand Smoke Control Code to prohibit smoking more than 10 feet from entrances, which is current law.

The airport has been getting lots of public complaints about smoking in front of the terminal, so in December the Airport Board approved a smoking prohibition in any area the board designates. The city-owned airport needed Assembly approval.

Airport Manager Jeanie Johnson said the airport board did not consider a full ban on smoking because a number of employees and airline passengers smoke.

The airport already has installed two smoking shelters that look like bus stops adjacent to the terminal building. One is on the front curb near the older part of building. Johnson said the other was placed away from the curb and around the side of the building near the bus canopy at the new end of the terminal.

“That we did to accommodate all those employees that were standing under the bus canopy smoking and we weren’t able to really give them a ticket for doing something that at this particular time was legal,” Johnson says.

Only Assembly member Jerry Nankervis objected to the ordinance. He recalled the history of Juneau’s smoking ban…

“Several years ago this body enacted an ordinance that prohibited smoking inside businesses, city and private businesses, then we extended that to ten feet outside teach door. Now this extends it farther than that. My concern is where will this stop? I don’t believe it will stop here,” Nankervis says.

The ordinance gives the airport board authority to post any area on the campus as non-smoking.

The entire campus of Bartlett Regional Hospital, also owned by the city and borough of Juneau, is non-smoking.

 

 

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