Efforts to ban smoking at federal buildings have a long, complex history (but what federal personnel issue doesn’t?). In 1997, Bill Clinton banned smoking in most federal workplaces with an executive order that permitted federal buildings to establish smoking rooms.
At the end of George W. Bush’s administration, the General Services Administration published a new policy banning smokers from lighting up in the courtyards of federal buildings or within 25 feet of doorways or air ducts. In changing the policy, GSA cited studies that show secondhand smoke is harmful to co-workers or anyone else exposed to it and laws in dozens of states that ban smoking at state government and private office buildings.
Notably, federal union leaders said the regulation might create issues for workers addicted to smoking.
But of course.
No surprise here at all.
