Push to ban smoking at R.I.'s casinos reignites at the State House
Vanessa Baker brought more than just testimony to the State House basement Thursday.
She came armed with inhalers, eye drops, nose spray, and ibuprofen, the medication she relies on to treat the constant symptoms triggered by lingering cigarette smoke at Bally's casinos in Lincoln and Tiverton, where she works as an iGaming supervisor.
There was a time she was able to stop using them: when Bally's temporarily banned smoking after it reopened Rhode Island's two casinos which had been closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But those rules were lifted by March 2022.
'It took me nine months to get put back on all that medication and I had to take a sick leave of absence for six months to get my lungs back to where I could work,' Baker told the House Committee on Finance. 'There's no safe ventilation that's protecting us.'
Which is why she and other employees are once again pushing lawmakers to pass a bill sponsored by Rep. Teresa Tanzi, a South Kingstown Democrat, that would put an end to Bally's two-decade exemption from the state's indoor smoking ban.
It's a proposal Tanzi has filed each session since 2021, usually stalling at the committee level, although House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi allowed a symbolic vote to advance the bill last year. He is now one of the 10 cosponsors listed on the latest edition of the bill.
'I hope we will pass some version of the bill this year,' Shekarchi said in an emailed statement Friday.
Tanzi's bill has the backing of 55 of the chamber's 75 members.
The growing support in the House mirrors overall sentiment in Rhode Island. The AFL-CIO in February released a poll that found nearly 7 in 10 survey respondents 'strongly' or 'somewhat' supported a smoking ban at the state's two casinos.
Rep. George Nardone, a Coventry Republican, told the Bally's representative before him Thursday that he continues to 'draw the short straw' in testifying against the proposal.
'It's cruel to make people that are not smokers have to inhale some and work in [that] environment — and they have to stay there based on their job,' he said. 'I think the state made a mistake giving you guys an exemption.'
But the company remains firmly opposed to the annual proposal.
Craig Sculos, Bally's senior vice president of Rhode Island Regulatory Relations, told the committee that allowing smoking attracts customers coming in from out of state. Massachusetts does not allow smoking at any of its casinos, nor is it allowed at the two tribal-run facilities in Connecticut.
'Should all the regional casinos maintain a non-smoking policy, players are expected to do what players normally do: They'll go to the casino that's closest,' Sculos said.
He argued that the smoking sections of the casinos generate more revenue than the non-smoking areas, pointing to slot machines that average $200 more in daily play within the smoking zones.
'You set the floor like you set a menu in your restaurant, you set based upon player demand,' Sculos said. 'If we were to see capacity switch the other way — we would make that change.'
Matt Dunham, president of Table Game Dealers Laborers Local 711, refuted the idea that smoking provides Bally's a market advantage over its neighbors. He called Bally's a 'casino of convenience' — central, away from Boston traffic, and allows people as young as 18 to play.
'It is not because people can smoke while they are in the building,' he said. 'And I can all but guarantee that the same customers will still be there, they'll just be smoking outside of the buildings.'
Sculos said rules already prohibit patrons from smoking directly at gaming tables and employees can request non-smoking areas as shift availability allows.
But those shifts aren't easy to get. Bill DelSanto, a table dealer at Bally's Twin River Casino in Lincoln, told the finance committee those shifts are given based on seniority.
Beverage server Karen Gorman also told lawmakers that trying to pick up non-smoking shifts isn't an option at the Tiverton location where she works.
'Even if I had that ability, I would still have to walk through the smoke,' she said. 'I don't want to get cancer. I want to feed my family, I want to buy groceries, I want to pay for my daughter's taekwondo, and for a college education.'
Tanzi's bill was held for further study by the committee, as is standard for an initial vetting by a legislative panel. Companion legislation introduced Feb. 7 by Sen. V. Susan Sosnowski, a South Kingstown Democrat, has yet to be scheduled for a hearing before the Senate Committee on Labor and Gaming.
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