Casino Smoke

It's been a few years since I've been to Vegas but am headed back soon!  Wondering if casinos are still as smoke filled or are more of them restricting smoking.

There have been a few casinos in both Vegas and Reno that have tried to be nonsmoking, but they all failed. Even a nonsmoking area in a smoking-allowed casino has proved to be a bust where it was tried--mainly because the smoke drifts into the "nonsmoking area," so it isn't a refuge.

The good news is that there are overall fewer smokers, because so many of them have died from their habit and aren't being replaced by new smokers (young people are dumb, but smoking isn't cool for them). The bad news is that Vegas is kind of a smokers' haven, as people who smoke don't like the restrictions in California and other states and decide to move/retire to Vegas to happily puff away until they die (and may it be soon!).

Those smokers are a nasty bunch. Don't bother to ask the guy next to you if he could put out his cigarette. Don't cough and try to wave the smoke away. He'll just snarl at you and tell you "this is a casino" (I've heard that one about 8,000 times). NO ONE will afford you the courtesy of putting out their stink-stick. No one.

The newer casinos have better ventilation/air-purifying systems, and in general, a larger, more expansive casino will disperse the smoke better than a tighter, low-ceiling casino, so I would go to a larger, newer property--but the problem is, most such places are Strip joints, where you never want to gamble, stay, or eat, unless you hate money. You might try some of the newer Stations casinos like Durango or Red Rock.

But the truth is--if you dislike cigarette smoke, you'll still be disgusted and appalled by the volume and number of smokers in Vegas casinos compared to any other places you've been. Oh, and you get smokers in bars and restaurants, where smoking restriction regulations are laughed at. Nevada is still a smoker state, again, until they all die off. I recommend that you avoid Vegas until that happens.

Well, Kathryn, I guess I have to post a counter-point to some of what Kevin said.  My opinions/beliefs only, but my impression is that there is much less smokiness in the casinos.  But then I am a Strip snob, so maybe it is worse Downtown.  Kevin's point about better ventilation in casinos is well taken, and while there are still smokers about, somehow I end up in the hotel room without the awful stench that soaked my clothes and hair of 10-15 years ago.  I always pack some Fabreeze (and use it even if I don't notice my clothes cig-stinky at the end of the night).  You can often ask that a table be deemed non-smoking if you get there before it already is allowing smoking and at least one at the table already is.  I think most dealers are happy to be at a non-smoking table.

Also, I find many, if not most, smokers ask if I mind them smoking.  I usually reply "As long as it doesn't come my way", which can be translated to "Yes I do mind", which seems to work pretty well.  I even had a guy say, "That's fine, I don't need to be smoking these damned things anyway" as he put his cigs and lighter away.  Now that was a first, I'll admit.  But where I gamble (Vegas, Biloxi) I find people overall more considerate with their smoking.

Hope you have a fun Vegas vacation!

Candy  

I mostly agree with Kevin on this one.  I literally can't stand it.  I'll get up and leave or move down the bar further when it happens.  Now I realize when I sit a a bar, I'm only asking for it.  I just don't get it though.  

How about when they smoke but they tilt the filthy thing away from themselves because they don't like the smoker either?  That's a real beauty that just about sends me fully over the edge into rage......I want to say "you are the F'ing idiot with the disgusting habit.  You should be required to hold it directly below your nostrils!"

My favorite moment was about ten years ago, at the Barona casino northeast of San Diego. I was playing $1 NSUD during a point multiplier promotion (it worked out to almost +1%), and I had been playing for about an hour when a woman sat down next to me and immediately lit up. Now, there were five fullpay $1 NSUD in one bank, the only ones in the joint, and I was on the leftmost one, so I asked her if she could play one of the other three vacant machines instead--she was holding her pigarette in her LEFT hand so I could get as much smoke in my face as possible.

She naturally refused my request, and not nicely, either. (I had already discerned that simply asking her to put the damn thing out would have been futile.) The worst part was that she didn't actually smoke the fucking thing--she just held it in the air, like some kind of talisman, only taking a drag every couple of minutes or so. So I got 7/8 of the total smoke from the stink-stick. I asked her once again to at least switch hands. She snarled at me and barked out the mandatory line, "This is a casino." This might be your grave, I thought. I was getting MAD. I thought of moving down to the fifth machine in the row, which would have placed me a little farther away, but I was frankly tired of being driven away from machines by %^%#$ smokers. I lost it. I yelled "PUT THAT GODDAMN THING OUT!" She immediately went into histrionics and security came running up.

I told them that OK, I would be leaving, after they gave me the standard speech "Smoking is allowed in our casino, sir, blah blah." I moved to a completely different section of the casino and started to play a quarter machine. Five minutes later, security came hustling up to me. I asked, "What's the problem?" They said that the smoke-bitch had requested/demanded that I be removed from the casino altogether and they were obeying her. I said, amazed, "Can she DO that"? One of the guards said, sotto voce, "She loses about thirty thousand a month in here, she plays every day, so what she wants, she pretty much gets." I shrugged and got up, they let me cash out my ticket and then escorted me to valet, where my car was.

HILARIOUS EPILOGUE: The entire Barona casino is now non-smoking, which they advertise loudly on billboards all over San Diego. I guess smoking is bad now!

MGM Park is smoke free. 

I find that MGM properties are less smokey than Ceasars and have better drinks

That's crazy!   But I can see it happening for sure.  

I sometimes glare at the smokers and make them very uncomfortable.  But it seldom actually gets them to move.  It just gets me more angry.  

A freind of mine from about 20 years ago was a daily VP player (he was an AP), and it got to the point where he carried one of those little portable fans everywhere and if next to or near a smoker, would turn on the fan and point it at the offender. He told me that literally dozens of smokers had told him, "You can't do that!" and he would always say, "What, you can blow smoke in my face but I can't blow air in yours?" On a few occasions when the dispute got hot enough so that security was called, they usually sided with the smoker, which both he and I found amazing. He finally started carrying the most awful, stinky cigar he could find, and if near a recalcitrant smoker, would light and hold it so that the smoker got as large a dose of the fumes as possible.

Right about then, I had a marvelous idea that never made it past the planning stage. A new brand of cigarettes: one in every ten thousand individual cigarettes would randomly be "loaded" with cyanide. Here and there, with no warning, a smoker would light up and immediately pitch face down on his machine, stone cold dead. I planned to call my new brand of cigarettes "Snuffs." My plan was to make Snuffs the only brand of cigarettes sold in America, with the goal of gradually whittling down the smoking population. My friend thought that no one would quit, since a one in ten thousand chance of dying was pretty much what every smoker fades on a daily basis anyway.

It's such a shame this never came to pass. Think of the absolutely delicious feeling--you're happily playing your machine, when the clown next to you starts rummaging in his/her purse or shirt and you think, "Oh, no!" and sure enough, they pull out a stink-stick and light it up--with that initial high-volume puff that always winds up directly in your face--and the next moment, BAM!--face down on their machine, with a surprised expression.

That would be very enjoyable.  

Kevin: What days are best to play at EI and Rainbow if my November trip is Mon am to Thurs pm?  I know Tues at EI but I'd probably go two days to Henderson.