St. Louis Lambert smokers get reprieve ST. LOUIS (AP) =97 Smokers traveling through Lambert Airport in St. Louis= can=20 puff away after all. A bill before the St. Louis Board of Aldermen bans=20 smoking in all buildings owned or leased by the city, but Alderman Freeman= =20 Bosley Sr. excluded the airport from the ban. Bosley allowed the exemption= =20 after airport administrators showed him a video of how the airport smoking= =20 lounge exhausts remove smoke from the lounges. Air quality tests paid for=20 by the Tobacco Free Missouri-Greater St. Louis Coalition indicate that=20 there are traces of nicotine in the air outside the lounges. But Bosley=20 said those traces could come from the clothing of smokers. "We have no=20 business fixing something that is not broken," he said Thursday. The=20 airport includes eight smoking lounges in concourses and one in the main=20 terminal. The city spent about $450,000 to install them six years ago. Viviane McKay, a member of the coalition, said she was happy, for now, with= =20 the partial victory. "We will put the airport in a separate bill=20 altogether," McKay said. "We have to try to show the aldermen that even=20 though there may be small amounts of nicotine, cigarette smoke is still=20 getting out (of the lounges)." Aldermen worried that closing the lounges=20 would force smokers outside and create jams at security checkpoints as they= =20 passed through repeatedly. Some said it was irresponsible for the city to=20 spend money on the lounges and then take them out. Bosley's bill also=20 prohibits smokers from lighting up within 25 feet of a city building. At=20 City Hall, that would mean no more workers huddling around ashtrays just=20 outside entrances, where an overhang helps protect them from bad weather.=20 "I wish we could make it completely off city property," Bosley said. Some=20 smokers at City Hall grumbled at the ban. But Matt Murphy, an assistant to= =20 Aldermanic President James Shrewsbury, said it would be an incentive for=20 him to quit. "We are a dying breed, literally, and it's time to face the=20 fact that public sentiment rests with the nonsmokers," Murphy said. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Mas Site: www.tntisland.com/tntrecords/mas2003/ Site of the Week: http://www.caribbeanfloral.com TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************