Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 24, 1993                   TAG: 9310240006
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Newport News Daily Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK                                LENGTH: Medium

NAVY RELAXES CURB ON SMOKING AT SEA

The Navy says this week's decision ordering all commanders to provide at least one smoking area on every ship beginning Jan. 1 is an attempt to standardize policy throughout the service as it marches toward smoke-free status by 2000. Reports of a black market in cigarettes and of stealth smokers ducking behind hatches aboard the self-declared smoke-free aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt had nothing to do with the decision, a Navy spokesman said.

Others aren't so sure, including a congressman or two from North Carolina, the No. 2 tobacco-producing state. Skip Smith, the press spokesman for one, Democratic Rep. H. Martin Lancaster, said his boss campaigned actively to change the Navy's mind.

"The congressman exerted all the influence he was capable of with the secretary of the Navy and Navy brass in having this policy changed," Smith said. "As a member of the morale, welfare and recreation panel of the House Armed Services Committee, that's considerable."

The House panel has oversight over post exchange sales, including those of tobacco products.

"The MWR panel worked to encourage these guys to change this policy," Smith said. "Martin, as the representative of the largest tobacco-producing region in the world, was very enthusiastic about it." Smith said most of the congressmen from eastern North Carolina, the state's largest tobacco-growing region, "are real sensitive about tobacco issues."

"I'm not going to say that there wasn't congressional interest," Cmdr. Mike John of the Bureau of Naval Personnel said. But he said the policy change "isn't a change of heart. This has been in the works for a while."