Smoking & mirrors

God bless the New Jersey Republican Party. It is stepping up where Democrats in the Assembly have failed (or at least proven spineless). This week, the GOP’s caucus announced—without equivocation—that it would provide the votes to get smoking in Atlantic City casinos banned. Already 13 GOPers have signed onto the proposed ban. Now, if the Dems can just force a vote, the revocation of Atlantic City’s smelly special status will be over and done.

There will, however, be no Profile in Courage award for Gov. Phil Murphy (D), who continues to weasel on the issue. Responding to fed-up constituents, Murphy said he wouldn’t sign an executive order “because it would be struck down probably within 24 hours is the first answer.” Asked point-blank, “Do you think casino employees have a right to breathe clean air at their workplace like every other person that works indoors? Do you think casino workers have a right to safety,” Murphy continued to waffle.

He said defensively that “our folks defended the statute, the current law, rather, because that’s what we do. That’s sort of our obligation. Overwhelmingly, that that’s what we end up doing. It’s not because we took a position on whether there should be smoking or no smoking … There is the other reality that you’re going to have an impact on business. That doesn’t mean it trumps the health issue. In fact, it could never do that. But folks have to go into this with their eyes open. Again, this is back to union jobs. If those fears are well-founded, that’s also a jobs question that’s at play here.” Ah yes, the old canard about smoking bans putting gambling halls out of business. Which has never happened. Not anywhere.

Not taking ‘sorta maybe but maybe not’ for an answer, Murphy’s interlocutor pressed him, prompting the governor to put the onus on the GOP: “I get it and I feel I have nothing but sympathy for that part of the argument but there are folks who have interests on all sides of this and I’m not sure I have a sense of the prospect for the bill to get to me but I know it picked up some support among Assembly Republicans.” Americans for Nonsmokers Rights President Cynthia Hallett wasn’t having any of Murphy’s shilly-shallying. She vented, “There is little comfort in knowing that the governor will sign a bill if it reaches his desk. We urge him to take it a step further and use his position to push for legislative action that protects his constituents and prioritizes casino workers’  health while they still have it.”

Table games dealer Lamont White piled on, fuming, “He keeps saying he’d sign a bill if it reaches his desk, but he hasn’t done anything to advocate on workers’ behalf for that bill to get there. The governor is putting the corporate interests and their perceived profits ahead of our health.”

Nor did it escape notice that, across the country, Las Vegas casino executives were being shorn in the name of fighting childhood cancer—but not lifting a pinkie to combat secondhand smoke and its attendant health perils. Hallett let them have it: “If casino executives want to combat cancer among children and adults alike, they should immediately stop allowing indoor smoking at all of their properties. This is the best way for them to make a real difference and put substance behind their claims of valuing their team members—including pregnant women who work in this dangerous environment because they have no choice. The hypocrisy is stunning.”

As you know, we’re currently halfway through Responsible Gaming Month. Well, apparently responsibility in gambling does not extend to a responsibility toward the health of one’s workers and patrons. Casino Employees Against Smoking Effects founder Nicola Vitola found this particularly noxious, especially since smoking and disordered gambling have been shown to be interlocking comorbidities. Alluding to making customers step outside for their lungful of tar and nicotine, Vitola observed, “Experts in gambling addiction prevention say that taking breaks is one of the best ways to interrupt the damaging cycle of destructive gambling.”

But do casino executives really want to break that “damaging cycle”? This is a vexing question that continues to bob to the surface. For instance, Rivers Pittsburgh got busted by Richard Schuetz, who found Big Gaming sleeping with the ostensible enemy (Big Tobacco). While in Pittsburgh for the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States, he found a cigarette machine just off the casino floor. Yes, the industry not only wants you to smoke yourself to death’s door, they’ll help you keep doing it. Particularly offensive was the presence of flavored cigarettes. “Flavored brands are considered more addictive, harder to quit, more damaging to the health of the user, and often targeted towards people of color,” Schuetz observed.

Well, if Big Gaming won’t clean up its act unilaterally, the invisible hand of the free marketplace may make it clean up its act. For instance, when casino megaresorts come to New York City, they will have to be smoke-free. That could be good for them and quite bad for Atlantic City. Who wants to ride a bus to the Boardwalk and breathe foul air when you can play close to home and keep your lungs clean? That really could put A.C.’s lesser casinos on the ropes. If they behaved proactively, it would level the playing field before Gotham upgrades.

A Normington Petts poll from a year back found the public 74% in favor of smoke-free casinos, so much so that they were likelier to visit one. 20% were less likely to seek out clean air. Well, Atlantic City, there’s your constituency. Want to try getting by on 20%? Good luck with that. Hallett rubs the finding in, saying, “Right now is a prime opportunity for Atlantic City casinos to end the outdated business practice of allowing indoor smoking. In addition to reducing problem gambling—no state has a higher rate of problem gambling than New Jersey—and protecting the wellbeing of their employees, casinos would make themselves more competitive with an overwhelming majority of guests who don’t want to visit a smoke-filled casino.”

That 20% is also a shrinking customer pool. Only 6% of Americans under 30 smoke cigarettes, precipitously down from the 35% of 25 years ago. And only 11% of adults overall are smokers. That’s a weak hand for Big Gaming to draw upon. The comfort is that both MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment are starting to phase out smoking rooms in hotels, according to ANR, because they’re so damned expensive to clean. There’s an argument which the industry evidently cannot ignore. If Hallett is correct, it’s one of the first encouraging moves from Big Gaming on this score. May there be many others to follow.