H.R. 1662, a bill to amend title 38, United States Code, to prohibit smoking in any facility of the Veterans Health Administration, and for other purposes

H.R. 1662 would prohibit smoking indoors at medical facilities of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and eliminate the current requirement that VA provide smoking areas for staff and patients at its major medical facilities. Those provisions would be effective within 90 days of the bill’s enactment. (The department already prohibits indoor smoking at its medical facilities.) Beginning in 2023, the bill also would prohibit individuals from smoking outdoors at VA medical facilities. Based on information from VA, we expect that the department would continue to provide outdoor smoking areas through 2022. While the bill would eventually reduce costs for maintaining those smoking areas, CBO expects that those effects, which would probably be small, would occur after 2022. Thus, CBO estimates that implementing the bill would have no significant budgetary effects over the 2018-2022 period.

Enacting H.R. 1662 would not affect direct spending or revenues; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures do not apply. CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 1662 would not increase net direct spending or on-budget deficits in any of the four consecutive 10-year periods beginning in 2028.