In the meantime, however, right or wrong, the casinos seem to think it wouldn’t be in their best interests.

The fact of the matter is this: If smoking continues to decline in popularity, not counting vaping, as it has, then eventually casinos will simply go non-smoking totally on their own, or in the alternative, will eventually restrict people who want to smoke to the small areas of the casino that were once reserved for adamant non-smokers. Besides that, one could always retort with the old, “Just because you CAN do it doesn’t mean that YOU have to,” which is the same line of argument that some of the people who would promote the positive social changes that we have seen, and which will go unnamed, would use. Okay, that’s a superficially fair argument, but if we extended that argument to include everything regarding what a minority percentage of citizens can do or not do, and codify any such restrictions into law, then…uh…let’s just say some of the social progress we have made as a nation over the last few decades never would have happened!įor that reason, I think that particular line of argument loses merit on its face.

On the one hand, non-smokers would want to know, “Why shouldn’t there be laws that prevent people from smoking inside of casinos when only one in eight adults would be impacted.” According to the CDC, however, from 2005 until 2020, the percentage of adults that smoked, at least cigarettes, has dropped by more than 8% down to 12.5%. Prior to that, smoking, drinking and land casino gambling had always kind of went hand in hand in hand. That was certainly the case in destinations such as Las Vegas and Atlantic City, and in the case of Atlantic City, actually extended well into the 2021 calendar year. In the vast majority of states, as a result of either mask mandates or properties choosing for its patrons to wear masks before the vaccines started to roll out, many casinos properties that were formerly smoking went non-smoking for a time. One event that renewed this debate was the Covid-19 pandemic.

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