The instant Tammy Brady felt the lump in her breast in February 2022, she knew it was cancer. With no known genetic predisposition for breast cancer, she suspects 38 years of working in smoky Atlantic City casinos played a role.
“I was just trying to make a living,” said Brady, 56, a dealer and supervisor at Borgata in that New Jersey resort city. “You don’t think, you know, that you’re going to get sick at your job.”
Some casinos continue to allow indoor smoking even as the share of Americans who smoke fell from about 21% in 2005 to 12% in 2021 and smoking is banned in at least some public spaces in 35 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. Still, 13 of the 22 states and territories that allow casino gambling permit smoking in at least part of their facilities.
Brady is among the casino employees, anti-smoking advocates, and public health experts who argue it is long past time to snuff out casino exemptions from smoking bans, given the dangers of secondhand smoke. But they’ve faced stiff pushback from some gambling industry leaders, including in Missouri, Louisiana, Kentucky, and New Jersey, who argue that smoking bans drive gamblers away — especially in places where patrons can go instead to a casino in a nearby jurisdiction that allows them to light up.
I’m not big on the banning anything, but one’s rights end when another person’s rights begin. If tobacco is hurting non-smoking employees, it’s gotta go.
I kinda like when casinos are still smokey. It’s like a step back in time. They’ve all gone non-smoking around here though, and it took a little bit of the magic with it.
Thats what I was coming to say. I know it’s an unpopular opinion, and I’m not even a smoker, but I LOVED living in Las Vegas and stepping into the older casinos that still smelled like cigarette smoke.
It just made everything feel grittier, and like it truly was “Sin City” as opposed to the “Family Friendly Getaway” that the city has been trying to become.
They’re non smoking here too, except the high roller rooms. Different rules for the rich.
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The science disagrees with you:
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/secondhand-smoke/health.html
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/secondhand-smoke/policy.html
You don’t have the freedom to hurt others, period. If you must smoke, do it in a place where others are not subjected to it. It’s not hard.
I don’t have the freedom to play music loud enough to damage your hearing in the casino. I don’t have the freedom to shine UV-B lighting at you in the casino. I don’t have the freedom to release poisonous gases at you in the casino. All of these things hurt the people around, so we don’t give people the freedom to do them.
Everyone should have access to a safe work environment, especially hospitality workers. Their jobs are already hard, why do you want them to also get hurt?
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Ok, you don’t trust the CDC because of the USA’s war on drugs policies/funding. Fair enough. Here’s information from only non-USA health organizations:
https://www.who.int/activities/protecting-people-from-tobacco-smoke
https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/environmental-burden-of-cancer/second-hand-smoke
https://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/doi/10.46234/ccdcw2022.020
https://www.health.gov.au/topics/smoking-vaping-and-tobacco/about-smoking/passive-smoking
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/quit-smoking/passive-smoking-protect-your-family-and-friends/
Should I find more, or is World Health Organization, EU and the governments of China, Australia, Canada, and the UK enough? All of these organizations agree that second hand smoke is harmful.
I’m not being self-righteous, I’m saying you don’t have the right to hurt other people. I understand that your argument is that second hand smoke doesn’t hurt other people, so I assume you would agree that you don’t have the right to hurt other people (but maybe you wouldn’t agree, idk). Now we’re just determining who’s right, you and the tobacco industry, or every science-based health administration and organization in the world and the general consensus of the medical community.
If you ultimately do agree that second hand smoke is harmful to others, you’ll have to decide if you want to update your belief that these laws shouldn’t be passed and maybe start smoking further away from people, or if you want to change your morality to say you have the right to hurt other people.
You can also do nothing, ignore all of the evidence I’ve presented to you, and just try not to suffer from too much cognitive dissonance.
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