Should airports snuff out smoking rooms?

Travelers can shop, snack, dine and order fancy cocktails in most  U.S. airports.

In many airports, manicures, music concerts, kids' play areas and lottery ticket sales are offered.

And in some major U.S. airports, there are special indoor spaces for smokers to light up.

If non-smokers’ rights advocates and the country’s top public health advocate get their wish, airport smoking rooms will be snuffed out.

In May,  a few months after the 25th anniversary of the federal law banning smoking on domestic U.S. flights, Vice Adm. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general, posted a photo on Facebook and Twitter giving thumbs down to smoking rooms at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Several anti-smoking groups  publicly urge Salt Lake City International Airport, which  has five smoking rooms, to make the airport’s new main terminal — scheduled to open in 2020 — entirely tobacco-free.

“In a state that does not allow smoking in other major public places and workplaces, it is time that the Salt Lake City International Airport does what is right to protect the health of all of those who utilize it by eliminating all the indoor smoking rooms,” said Brook Carlisle, Utah government relations director for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

SLC spokeswoman Bianca Shreeve says the plan is to keep the smoking lounges as a benefit to smokers who make connections at the airport. The lounges “not only segregate smokers from non-smokers, they keep smokers with short connections from trying to smoke in areas they are not supposed to,” she said.

Initially paid for by Phillip Morris and built before the 1996 Olympics, the 12 smoking lounges at Atlanta’s airport “are an amenity that many of our passengers still use,”  ATL spokesman Andrew Gobeil says. “There are no immediate plans to close them.”

Gobeil says that if Hartsfield-Jackson were to go smoke-free, airport guests might be exposed to secondhand smoke from smokers who might “surreptitiously light up in airport restrooms.”

A smoke-free policy “would also force smokers outside the terminal and would unduly burden security lines as those passengers re-enter secure zones,” he said.

In addition to SLC and ATL, there are public indoor smoking spaces in several other major U.S. airports, including Washington Dulles International, McCarran International in Las Vegas and Denver International.

Nashville International Airport has two Graycliff smoking lounges accessible to those paying an entrance fee. T.G.I. Friday’s, in the middle of Concourse D at Miami International Airport, has a smoking lounge for patrons and the Smokin’ Bear Lodge Smoking Lounge located behind the Timberline Restaurant at Denver International Airport is accessible with a $5 minimum purchase from the restaurant.

At Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, there is a smoking area inside the Admirals Club in Terminal A, although American Airlines says that smoking policy is “under evaluation.”

Dulles Airport has four smoking lounges and considers them an amenity for the “broad cross section of passengers we serve, which includes a large number of international travelers and domestic travelers boarding or getting off long transcontinental flights,”  airport spokesman Christopher Paolino says.

In Las Vegas, McCarran International Airport allows smoking in select bars and gaming areas.

“When smoking was previously not allowed, we repeatedly dealt with instances in which smokers would improperly light up in inappropriate public-use areas, such as companion care restrooms, or would push open alarmed fire escape doors to go outside to smoke, requiring a law enforcement response,” airport spokeswoman Christine Crews says.

Though the number of U.S. airports offering smoking spaces has declined in the past 10 years, a CDC study found that the average air pollution levels from secondhand smoke directly outside designated smoking areas in five large hub U.S. airports — Washington Dulles, Denver, Salt Lake City, Atlanta and Las Vegas — were five times higher than levels in smoke-free airports.

“Given all the science that we have and the fact that so many cities and states are working towards going smoke-free, the fact that airports aren’t going in that direction more quickly is disconcerting,” says Cynthia Hallett, executive director of Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights.

The U.S. surgeon general agrees. “We know secondhand smoke kills,” Vivek Murthy wrote in an email. “By making our indoor spaces — like airports — smoke-free, we can help prevent 41,000 deaths each year in the U.S."

Harriet Baskas is a Seattle-based airports and aviation writer and USA TODAY Travel's "At the Airport" columnist. Follow her at twitter.com/hbaskas.