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No
Smoking at AC Slot Machines?
Atlantic
City’s City Council is seriously
considering banning smoking at the
town’s eleven slot machine and gambling
casinos – something that horrifies the
casino industry. If the city passes the
ban on the slot machine and gambling
casinos saying that there is to be no
smoking, it could pass on Friday with
the Mayor signing it into law 20 days
later. Slot machine and gambling casinos
without smoking? Unheard of!
The
problem is that if they ban smoking in
all slot machine and gambling casinos,
those that want to smoke may very well
take their business elsewhere. There are
many more smoker friendly slot machine
and gambling casinos over in Connecticut
– mainly Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun – or
over to Pennsylvania where they allow
smoking as well. "Given the economic
effects that the imposition of a smoking
ban would cause," revenues would dive at
least 20%, resulting in "approximately
3,400 employees being laid off," said
Joseph Corbo of the Casino Association
of New Jersey.
When the
state said that indoor public places
were to be smoke free, they gave an
exemption to the slot machine and
gambling casinos. However, Councilman
Bruce Ward found a way around it in that
"The New Jersey Clean Air Act allows a
municipality to create an ordinance that
gives equal or greater protection [to
its people]" and “secondhand smoke
inhalation is serious." Therefore, if
you are working in or going to the slot
machine and gambling casinos you deserve
the right to be smoke free.
The slot
machine and gambling casinos say they
would like to see the bill defeated
outright, but if it isn’t they will
probably end up suing as they feel the
state, not the city, has jurisdiction
over the casinos and their slot
machines.
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