Now the chairman of the Senate Health Committee, State Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, has scheduled a vote next week that could very well ban smoking on New Jersey’s casino floors outright.

 If that happened it will snuff out a compromise reached forged between the Atlantic City Council and the local gaming lobby.

“We can’t say secondhand smoke is deadly except for casino workers and those who visit casinos,” Vitale said. “The compromise does not work. It's time to save the lives of the thousands of casino workers who are at risk because of second hand smoke."
There is serious speculation that an outright ban could further hurt the Atlantic City gaming market. While the city has done a great job at turning the area into a true multi day resort, legalized gaming pressure from Pennsylvania hurt its casinos as overall revenue dropped 2.9 percent last month to $394.5 million. Already some planned projects seemed to be reevaluating the market’s overall potential, meaning that a smoking ban could stave off the construction of new mega-resorts.

 The casino industry fears a smoking ban would mean a 20 percent drop in profits and the loss of 3,400 jobs.

Adding further to the woes of AC casino executives is the approval by New York State Governor Elliot Spitzer of a casino this week to be located in the Catskills. When built the $600 million casino will be more than an hour closer to New York City, a major Atlantic City feeder market.

On April 15th a smoking law set to take effect would have allowed smoking to occur that many insiders said reeked of a backroom deal. Smoking sections would have to be created and walled off entirely from the rest of the facility and be able to remove smoke from the building.

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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 released at the time of the January compromise.

Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s spokesman Anthony Coley gave a classic political answer to the AP this week, by perfectly straddling the issue. “We need to see how the current ban affects revenue,” Coley said to the Newark Star Ledger. “In an ideal world, Atlantic City casinos should be smoke-free.”

 Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts Jr., D-Camden, was much more amenable to keeping the stats quo. “I believe we will be very careful given the growing economic pressures that Atlantic City is facing,” Roberts told the Newark Star Ledger. “You had the local governing body weigh all the factors and make their best judgment, and I think we need to look at that very carefully.”

BusinessWeek reported that Karen Blumenfeld, a policy and legal director for the New Jersey Group Against Smoking Pollution, managed a study last year using Rhode Island’s partial non smoking ban as a model. She told BuinessWeek there were “widespread instances of people smoking in nonsmoking areas.”

 Bill sponsor Sen. John Adler, D-Camden, said casino workers "deserve to breathe clear air without the health risks associated with second hand smoke."

"These workers should not have to face a choice between health and unemployment," Adler said.

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