They hang out on street corners. They lurk near downtown office buildings. They cluster on the fringes of suburban corporate campuses.
Beggars? Gangbangers? Pickpockets? No, they`re smokers, pushed about as far as they can go-outdoors. Sidewalks and public plazas have become the smoking lounges of the 1990s.
”I feel really humiliated. It`s embarrassing,” said Larina Dillon, as she stood in the entry way of a building at Northwestern Memorial Hospital on the Near North Side, cigarette in hand. ”It`s unladylike to be out on the street smoking.”
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As an ever-growing number of businesses nationwide ban smoking from offices, knots of workers dragging on butts have become a familiar sight on downtown streets.
Suburban employees have been booted to the great outdoors as well, and some can`t even smoke there-not if it`s company property.
At Square D Co. headquarters in Palatine, smoking is prohibited anywhere on the 200-acre campus, indoors or out. Some workers have been spotted smoking in their closed, parked cars, while others have to depend on sympathetic supervisors to let them drive off the premises for breaks.
For smokers, it`s only the latest indignity after a decade of mounting prohibitions. First they were segregated in special smoking lounges or sections, which they considered a imposition at the time. But now many companies are eliminating even the smoking lounge.
”At first they moved me from my desk. Then they banished me to a corner of the cafeteria,” complained Karen Phillips, a secretary in the Equitable Building on North Michigan Avenue. ”Now look at me. They`ve kicked me out here. They treat me like some sort of disease.”
Research showing that secondhand smoke can be extermely harmful to nonsmokers has influenced companies to adopt the tough new smoking
restrictions.
A new study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency planned for release this fall claims that 53,000 people die each year from secondhand smoke, which the report will categorize as a carcinogen for the first time, according to Janet Williams, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Lung Association.
With anti-smoking sentiment on the rise in the United States, being forced to light up on the street can be so embarrassing that some smokers prefer to discuss their street experiences anonymously.
”My mother would slap me if she saw me lighting a cigarette on the street,” said one 45-year-old woman.
”I feel so stupid,” said a nurse at Northwestern Memorial.
But don`t expect pity from pedestrians.
At the sight of smokers bunched outside the IBM Building plaza on Wabash Avenue, Jim Corl, a schoolteacher visiting from Pittsburgh, wrinkled his nose in disgust. ”I don`t feel sorry for them. They should have to stand outside,” he said. ”Smoking is offensive.”
His sympathy went instead to IBM, which went smoke free a year ago.
”Look at a nice building like that. It`s going to get all cluttered up (by smokers out front),” he said.
But companies are not deterred by such clutter. Following announcements by such major companies as Metropolitan Life Insurance and Union Carbide, Du Pont on Wednesday announced it, too, will phase in no-smoking policies at 100 different facilities.
In 1990, airlines banned smoking on domestic flights. By 1992, all hospitals must be smoke-free to retain certification.
Nationwide, 47 of 50 states, including Illinois, have passed clean indoor air acts that require businesses, depending on their size, to designate smoking areas, said Diane Maple, national spokeswoman for the American Lung Association.
Smokers and the tobacco industry lobby believe that eliminating smoking lounges stems from anti-smoking hysteria that has little basis in any actual dangers.
”It`s unreasonable,” said Thomas Lauria, spokesman for the Tobacco Institute in Washington, D.C. ”There are better ways to accommodate non-smokers than literally escorting your friends and colleagues out to the street.”
Once companies go ”smoke free,” workers looking for a place to smoke during the day may have to jump a number of hurdles.
At Square D, for example, employees were originally relegated to two smoking areas in the lobby, next to a big air vent installed just for them, according to Robert Fiorani, director of corporate communications.
When that policy was in effect, 20 to 25 employees quit the habit, aided by company-sponsored stop-smoking clinics, Fiorani said. One or two people left their jobs, he said, leaving about 12 die-hard smokers, whose lobby puffing eventually inspired numerous complaints.
So the company changed its policy, which banished smoking from the entire campus.
At Pansophic Systems Inc., in Lisle, workers were originally allowed to smoke in front of the company building but later were asked to move.
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”They kicked us out of the front because they said we looked like a gang out there,” recalled employee Diane Owens.
Now Pansophic employees must smoke in a glass-sided shelter built especially for them, which in the summer heats up to steaming temperatures, workers gripe.
”It wouldn`t be so bad if there were air,” said Debbie Smith.
”There`s got to be a health law against this.”
Though the hazards of outdoor smoking may include heat rash in summer and frostbite in winter, a lovely day may leave smokers with the last laugh.
”In summer, it`s pretty nice,” said Marcia Peco, a secretary at Unocal Corp. in Schaumburg, as she smoked with a gentle sun overhead.
”In fact, some non-smokers feel discriminated against because we`re outside smoking while they`re inside working.”