Nobody Wins With Smoking Ban

The new smoking ban has managed to make a lot of people unhappy, but not so many happy. Atlantic City’s City Council has decided that the casinos in Atlantic City should be smoke free, or pretty close to it. The casinos obviously do not want their slot machines to be smoke free, but the casino workers do.

The council ended up voting that 25% of the casino floor space could still have smoking, while the rest was to be smoke free. This doesn’t make anyone happy, and it doesn’t help the casino workers with their health issues. The casino wanted 40%, the casino workers wanted 0% - so nobody got what they want.

The biggest problem is that the casinos think that they will lose business by making their slot machines and table games smoke free. They say that with the added competition that they have been getting from PA slot machines that this is not the time to be putting restrictions on smokers, especially since they can go there and smoke. They say that they need the smoking space to keep their slot machine and table game revenue up.

The casinos’ employees see it a different way – it is killing them to be working there. There are cases of workers who have worked in the smoke filled environments of the casinos for years, who have never smoked themselves, and are now finding themselves diagnosed with lung cancer.

No matter how it ends up coming out, someone is going to be unhappy. It does seem however, that if the casinos are willing to kill off their employees to keep their slot machine revenue then there are bigger problems here than just smoking.


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