Atlantic City, N.J. – Vince Rennich and Alan Angeloni consider themselves among the losers in New Jersey’s battle to ban smoking indoors.
Although acting Gov. Richard Codey signed a law Sunday banning smoking in bars, restaurants and most other indoor public places, the rule excludes casino gambling areas.
Rennich, a casino table-games supervisor, has lung cancer that he blames on 25 years of inhaling secondhand smoke.
“A good majority of the time, I’m surrounded in a cloud of smoke,” said Rennich, 47, who doesn’t smoke. “Even if it’s a no-smoking table, it doesn’t help. The way the smoke blows or drifts, you can only go so far. It’ll find you.”
For Angeloni, owner of Angeloni’s II, an Italian restaurant two blocks off the casino strip, the casino exemption is a matter of dollars and cents.
“It’s going to kill me; I know it is,” Angeloni said last week. “Do you know how many conventioneers eat here and come out to the bar to smoke afterward? You can kiss them goodbye now. They won’t even leave the casino.”
The ban, scheduled to take effect April 15, makes New Jersey the 11th state in the nation to prohibit smoking in restaurants and bars, according to the American Cancer Society. Smoking is already outlawed in New Jersey government buildings, and many private businesses restrict smoking.
Hundreds of individual cities and counties around the country also ban smoking in workplaces, restaurants or bars.
Chicago joins them today, when a ban on smoking in public places goes into effect, but the law gives taverns and restaurant bars in the city until 2008 to comply.
New Jersey exempted gambling areas at the request of Atlantic City’s $5 billion-a-year casino industry, which said a total smoking ban would cause losses in profits, state tax revenues and jobs.
New Jersey’s law is the first in the nation that explicitly excludes gambling areas, although other states’ bans do not have jurisdiction over Indian tribe casinos, according to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation.
Atlantic City’s gambling halls employ about 48,000 people, and the state’s 8 percent tax on casino revenue netted $401 million last year for programs benefiting senior citizens and the disabled.
