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Should Illinois casinos be granted an exemption from the state smoking ban?
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Results so far:
| No | 53% | 48 votes | Total: 90 votes | |
| Yes | 47% | 42 votes |
No
by Donna Thacker
Created on: May 14, 2010 Last Updated: May 15, 2010
On January 1, 2008, Illinois introduced a smoking ban in all public places. Business owners that allowed smoking, such as bars and restaurants, panicked and complained that it would hurt their revenue. Many of these businesses were small, locally owned places that relied on community support for their income.
Since they were forced to comply, or face stiff penalties, they found ways to work within the limits of the smoking ban and continue to attract their customers. Many of the local Illinois bars opened up a beer garden section where patrons could take their drinks, food and cigarette outside.
Fast Eddie’s Bonaire, in Alton Illinois, even purchased more land to extend their business outdoors. Bars in Highland, Illinois put up privacy fences and walls for outdoor areas. They supplied heaters for the chiller days for those that were hardier. Since most bar business is in the warmer summer months, these outdoor areas worked fine.
The point is that smaller establishments found ways to comply and still sustain their business. Should they be granted an exemption from the state smoking ban? Who needs the revenue more? It would seem like the small “Mom and Pop” type businesses would be in more desperate need of an exemption than a corporate owned casino.
Casinos claim that they lose business because people do not want to leave the building to have a cigarette. Maybe they should examine the reasons that people do not want to leave the building. Do people fear that it is 5 minutes of their time that they cannot gamble? Do people fear that someone else will “hit” on the machine they have been shoving money into for the past hour?
If that is the case, then perhaps these gamblers have a far greater problem than wanting to smoke while they gamble. Gambling is supposed to be a pleasurable sport.
When it becomes an obsession or addiction, it becomes a problem. If a gambler cannot decide between staying at their table or going outside for a smoke, then it would seem there is a problem with a gambling addiction.
Asking for an exemption from the smoking ban just so people can enjoy two addictions at the same time, seems as if the casinos are enabling one or both addictions simply to make money. It also appears that they do not care about the non smokers, who would prefer to gamble in a clean air casino.
Just to make things clear, I am a smoker. That is my choice and my right, but I do not expose my second hand smoke to other people. I do not even smoke in my home. Cigarette smoke stinks no matter how you try to mask it and I do not want my home to smell like an old stale ashtray.
Even as a smoker, I used to refuse to go to restaurants and bars that were not adequately ventilated because of the smell and excess smoke that lingered in the air.
Contaminating my lungs with my own smoke was one thing, but I did not care to breath in the second hand smoke that came from other people’s lungs. I find that I enjoy public places a lot more now that the air is free of all the smoke.
Casinos should not be allowed an exemption from the smoking ban, simply because they claim they are losing money. Smaller bars and restaurants have figured out ways to comply and still sustain their business.
Why make it easy on casinos? Let them figure out a way to make smokers and non smokers all happy when they visit the gambling spots.
Why bother introducing laws just to start giving exemptions? Where do the exemptions start and stop? If a casino is entitled to an exemption, why not the little bar down the street? The bar owner is trying to support a family, not a huge corporation. But then again, the casino probably offers up more revenue to the city. So, does it all come down to money, or upholding the law?
Learn more about this author, Donna Thacker.
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Yes
by Gerard Coulombe
Created on: August 11, 2009
Yes. Illinois casinos should be granted an exemption from the state smoking ban. There is a way to permit smokers to smoke and gamble. There is also a way to permit non-smokers a way to gamble in a smoke-free environment. The two are not incompatible. Each needs a separate place to gamble and smoke at the same time, and a place to gamble in a healthy environment.
It is like any establishment straddling State lines. All is permissible in the State that permits an activity that is illegal on the other. No research is offered to support this viewpoint, but, somewhere, someone knows that such places exist.
Illinois casinos with the riverboat theme while sitting on water are like tiny castles with a moat around them. But the solution is the same and we are pretty sure someone has already thought of making the top deck, smokers' badlands and the main deck, non-smokers' territory.
Of the several themes surrounding the casino and smoking question, a lot of forces are at work. Whereas health has won out pretty much as a proven issue that smoking is a deadly habit, other issues including loss revenue and contention between parties involving alleged corruption are intertwined with a desire to moderate in favor of abating laws somewhat in favor of allowing some smoking.
So neither party in this smoking versus non-smoking issue can be faulted for being utterly adamant about a point of view the other abhors- for one, the freedom to breathe-in healthy air and for the other, the freedom to breathe-in the smoke he or she wants even as they know that it is, like gambling, playing roulette on a life or death machine.
All know that gambling and smoking are addictive. Abuse of either are sure to result in dire consequences were each to become all degrading passions: One could lead to financial ruin while the other could lead to premature death.
A casino the size of those in Connecticut is an assembly of rooms that serve many functions. Having a section devoted to smokers and one devoted to non-smokers, however large and segmented to accommodate the various games would permit both to enjoy that which drives the recreational and consummate gambler. The rest of the establishment would be smoke free with one exception.
Hershey Park in Pennsylvania accommodates smokers by providing these folks with smoking spaces designed to minimize smoke from escaping the designated smoking area. Like those teacher smoking rooms of yesteryear, they isolate even the brightest that should know better to avoid mingling with those who choose their poison in the form of a stick of tobacco.
The smoking ban went into effect in Illinois on January 1, 2008, and as Monica Davey in Times People noted, a ban also took place in Paris France of all places. There were predictions then that revenues would fall, that most gamblers are also smokers, etcetera.
So far and probably forever, those who would deny suicidal smokers their freedom to smoke their way out of this life are winners on the grounds that secondhand smoke is just as dangerous as firsthand smoke. It would be just as suicidal for members of the Illinois General Assembly to tinker with smoking prohibitions. Tinkering, like smoking, is out.
So, it is the end of the line for the rugged individualist, the Humphrey Bogart type in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, without a cigarette dangling between dry lips, will their luck change? Ah, if only one were able to smoke alcohol.
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