“Smokers will say that they aren’t going to go gamble any more if they ban smoking,” said Linda Quinn of Montvale, New Jersey.
interviewed by The Associated Press expressed strong support for smoke-free casinos. The stakes are high, particularly in New Jersey, where the main casino workers’ union is threatening a strike in July if new contracts providing big raises are not reached before then. It also takes aim at a report commissioned in February by New Jersey’s casinos predicting massive revenue and job losses if a smoking ban were implemented. The report is the latest in a back-and-forth over whether there is evidence that smoking can be eliminated without harming casinos’ bottom line.
The authors also predicted that smokers will not abandon Atlantic City casinos in droves if New Jersey bans smoking there, noting that due to smoking bans in Connecticut and New York, and a smoke-free policy at Rivers casino Philadelphia, gamblers from New York, New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania would have only four options that offered smoking.
