House’s own smoke-filled room

It’s 4:30 on a Thursday afternoon, and the House of Representatives is hard at work making laws.

During a series of votes, members stroll in and out of the chamber to relax in the Speaker’s Lobby — an exclusive spot where they can put up their feet, crack jokes, read newspapers, make phone calls and, yes, smoke cigarettes, cigars and pipes.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California — where smoking bans have long been in place — recently glared across the lobby at a colleague who was cloaked in a plume of cigar smoke.

“There’s a story for you,” she told a reporter for The Washington Times. “That’s not allowed in here anymore.”

Actually, it is perfectly legal for members to light up in the Speaker’s Lobby, an unventilated room adjoining the House chamber on the second floor of the Capitol.

The room’s rules are set by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican who does not smoke.

“Members are required to be here for long hours and oftentimes need to be near the floor for votes and other legislative business,” said Hastert spokeswoman Lisa C. Miller. “To provide them a small designated area for smoking gives them the opportunity to be close by.”

Leaving the vast building for a puff outside the Capitol could take members 10 minutes, sometimes more than they can spare.

“As long as people have smoked, there’s been smoking in the Capitol,” said former House historian Ray Smock, noting that vendors once sold tobacco inside the building.

Some members are confused that a new citywide ban on smoking inside the workplace does not apply to some halls or rooms inside the more than 200-year-old Capitol, one of the few places where the term “members only” is still relevant and where smoke-filled backrooms are no myth.

It’s been four weeks since the House Office Building Commission changed its indoor smoking policy, banning the practice in House parking garages, hallways, elevators, bathrooms and “any other areas of the buildings generally accessible to the public.”

It also banned smoking within 25 feet of the public entrances to the Capitol and its adjoining House office buildings.

Certain rooms controlled by leaders or committees are exempt from the policy and are allowed to set their own rules, which is one reason why cigar smoke often wafts from under the door of the third-floor office of Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, California Republican.

Reps. Martin T. Meehan of Massachusetts and Henry A. Waxman of California, both Democrats, sent a letter to Mr. Hastert in June, urging him to prohibit smoking in all House buildings and chastising him for not observing the D.C. ban.

“Instead, the House will continue to expose staff and visitors to secondhand smoke, a known human carcinogen,” they wrote.

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