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by: Glenn Haussman.
Chalk one up for smoker’s rights. After the threat of a total ban on smoking in casinos in Atlantic City, it looks as if puffing players will still have a chance to play and smoke
 – albeit in as little as 25 percent of the gaming floor.

In what some are saying reeks of a backroom deal cut in a smoke filled room, Atlantic City’ City Council voted last night by a measure of 7 -2 in favor of a smoking restriction rather than an outright ban. If the plan is ratified at a February 7th meeting, casinos will have to split the gaming so 75 percent of the gaming space is smoke free. According to a report by Bloomberg News, the smoking sections will have to be walled off.

Already smoking is banned in casino resorts everywhere else but on the gaming floor.
The compromise “strikes a better balance between the health, economic and competitive concerns involved with the smoking ban issue,” Joseph Corbo, president of the Casino Association of New Jersey, said in a statement.

"Its poetic justice that we will implement this law one year exactly after the New Jersey Legislature presented the state with a flawed law banning smoking," said City Council Vice President Eugene Robinson, who pushed for the casino smoking ban. "It was flawed legislation because casinos were left out of the ban."

Once passed the new policy it will go into effect on April 15th.  According to an analyst’s letter obtained by onlinecasinocrawler.com written by Bear Sterns, “initially, the areas where smoking is permitted would not have to be enclosed or separately ventilated as operators will have until October 15th to submit their respective design plans to the state.  Once approved by the state, operators will have 90 days to begin construction on a fully enclosed, separately ventilated portion of their casino floor where smoking would be allowed.”

Bear Sterns see the compromise as a good solution for the overall health of the gaming market, but does believe it will be costly to reconfigure gaming floors with new walled off smoking areas. While anti-smoking groups are in an outrage over this compromise, the city’s casinos are somewhat relieved.

Carlos Tolosa, president of Harrah's Entertainment Inc.'s eastern region, told the AP the compromise would be “manageable,” and would lower the revenue losses expected if a total ban had been enacted.

A study commission by the by the Casino Association of New Jersey says the city could see as much as 20 percent of its business evaporate from a total smoking ban. Slot machines began operating late last year in neighboring Pennsylavania and two casinos will open in Philadelphia within three years. Philadelphia is just an hour’s drive from Atlantic City and has been a major feeder market for the resort town. Twenty five percent of Atlantic City’s visitors come from Pennsylvania, 10 percent from Philadelphia alone. Delaware, which is also adjacent to New Jersey also allows slot machines.

Variety of card and table games
at Sun Palace Casino


New Yorkers who smoke may be more tempted to head to Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun, two massive Connecticut casinos that are about the same distance from New York City as is Atlantic City. Based on Indian reservations, they will continue to permit smoking in most areas of their respective facilities.

Slot machines accounted for $3.8 billion of Atlantic City’s $5,018,300 in 2006 profits.

 “Economically, it will certainly have an impact,” Cory H. Morowitz of Morowitz Gaming Advisors LLC told the Press of Atlantic City.
 
When the Windsor casino in Toronto banned smoking at its casino last summer, it immediately lost one-third of its business as gamblers played table games and slots in Detroit, a U.S. city just over the Canadian border. That casino is now shifting its management team and will become a Caesars property as the venerable Harrah’s Entertainment comes in to operate it after a current expansion is completed next year.
Though Nevada recently banned smoking in many public places it spared the casinos.

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