These new labels bore more specific health warnings. In 1986 congress made permanent a 16-cent increase in the cigarette excise tax and enacted the Comprehensive Smokeless Tobacco Health Education act, banning all advertising for smokeless tobacco products on radio and television and requiring rotating health warnings similar to those for cigarettes. After intense prodding by the coalition, in 1987 congress banned all smoking aboard domestic airline flights lasting two hours or less. A 1990 law now bans all smoking on all flights lasting six hours or less. Thus, US skies are smoke free except for a few daily flights to Hawaii or Alaska.
Airports are another question.
No federal law regulates smoking policy in US airports. Unless state or local law dictates differently, it is left to the discretion of the people who manage each particular airport to decide whether there will be separate smoking and nonsmoking sections, where those sections will be located and how many there will be. The result is a crazy-quilt of policies. Some airports, such as those in Denver, Colorado, and New Orleans, Louisiana, have gone completely smoke free. Despite 26 years of warnings from the Surgeon General, smoking remains the chief preventable cause of death in the United States.