Ban on Smoking in Industry

To the Editor: Pacific Northwest Bell is a Seattle-based telephone company with over 15,000 employees. On July 15, 1985, its management announced that a new smoking policy would go into effect on October 15 of that year. The new policy was so straightforward that its essence was contained in one terse sentence: "To protect the health of Pacific Northwest Bell employees there will be no smoking in company facilities."The ban on smoking has now been in effect for six months, and the results are impressive. Although the company initially received some complaints about the new policy, not a single . . .