DENVER-
State lawmakers are considering banning smoking in casinos starting Jan. 1—giving casinos six more months to prepare for the change.
Negotiators for the House and Senate agreed Friday on the compromise date to extend the statewide smoking ban to cover casinos. It still must be approved by the full House and Senate.
The House voted earlier to include casinos in the ban starting July 1, but the Senate wanted to delay the start for another year.
Representatives of both chambers agreed Friday to wait until New Year’s Day at 8 a.m.—allowing gamblers to ring in 2008 while still smoking.
With the legislative session winding down, lawmakers are also considering ending another exemption in the statewide smoking ban—cigar bars.
Law enforcement officials and anti-smoking advocates testified this week that bars were using the cigar bar exemption to skirt the ban, threatening to undermine the ban.
The cigar-bar exemption was aimed at grandfathering in about a half-dozen bars that focused on selling cigars and providing a place for patrons to smoke them, but other bars have said they qualify too.
The casinos in Black Hawk, Cripple Creek and Central City, which bring in millions in state taxes, and bars where tobacco sales make up 5 percent of their annual sales are also exempt under the original law, which took effect July 1.
The law bans smoking in bars, restaurants, pool halls, indoor sports arenas, buses, trains and most hotel rooms.
If the proposals to ban smoking in casinos and cigar bars succeed, the only major exemptions remaining will be for the four smoking lounges at Denver International Airport.
Sen. Betty Boyd, D-Lakewood, has said the cigar bar ban could take effect at the same time as the casino ban. Casino ban sponsor Rep. Anne McGihon, D-Denver, declined to comment on that.
R.J. Ours, a spokesman for the American Cancer Society, said ending the cigar bar exemption is more urgent than the casino exemption because it has become a loophole.
“What is fair is fair, and it doesn’t seem to be working to exclude a handful of bars in the state,” he said.
An Adams County judge ruled in early April the ban was unconstitutional because bar owners weren’t given a chance to establish themselves as cigar bars.
Ours said he’s also concerned that DIA’s smoking areas are in restaurants or bars, exposing employees there to secondhand smoke, while other airports ban smoking altogether or simply provide separate rooms for smoking. But he said smoking ban advocates would likely work with the city to end that practice rather than coming back to the Legislature.
