Atlantic City: New bill seeks to permit casinos to keep smoking with additional restrictions

New Jersey state Sen. John Burzichelli introduced a bill Monday that would permit Atlantic City casinos to continue to allow gamblers to smoke on the casino floor while imposing additional restrictions on lighting up. The bill might be seen as a favorable compromise by casinos, as many workers fight to prohibit smoking altogether.

His measure would keep the current 25% limit of the casino floor on which smoking can occur. However, it would allow smoking in unenclosed areas of the casino floor that contain slot machines and are designated as smoking areas that are more than 15 feet away from table games staffed by live dealers. It also would allow the casinos to offer smoking in enclosed, separately ventilated smoking rooms with the proviso that no worker can be assigned to work in such a room against their will.

Whether to ban smoking is one of the most controversial issues not only in Atlantic City casinos but also in other states where workers have expressed concern about secondhand smoke. Workers are also waging similar campaigns in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Virginia.

The move sets up a fight between two competing bills: Burzichelli’s, which he describes as a compromise giving something to both sides; and a different bill that would end smoking altogether in the casinos, as reported by the Associated Press.

"It's about what we can do to keep casinos open, and how do we get it right," said Burzichelli, a Democrat from southern New Jersey and a former state Assembly deputy speaker, according to the above-mentioned media. "Losing one casino means thousands of jobs lost."

Sen. John Burzichelli

Atlantic City’s nine casinos say they fear that banning smoking while neighboring states including Pennsylvania continue to offer it would cost them jobs and revenue. Workers dispute that contention, saying smoke-free casinos have thrived in other states. They also say their health should come before casino profits.

The group CEASE (Casino Employees Against Smoking’s Harmful Effects) issued a statement Wednesday calling Burzichelli’s bill “Big Tobacco and casino industry talking points, copied and pasted.”

"This bill would retain the same level of smoking as is currently permitted and will not decrease in any way the amount of exposure workers have to secondhand smoke," the statement read. It added that the only bill with enough support to be passed and signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, is the total ban. For his part, Murphy has pledged to sign a smoking ban into law if passed by the Legislature. 

On Wednesday, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network urged New Jersey lawmakers to reject the new bill and enact the total smoking ban.

"Since the 1980s, we’ve known that secondhand smoke can cause cancer, along with a host of other devastating health effects, like heart disease," the group said in a statement. "Yet despite the crystal-clear proof that exposure to secondhand smoke is bad and that smoke-free laws work, lawmakers continue to force Atlantic City workers to choose between their paycheck and breathing in secondhand smoke."

For its part, the Casino Association of New Jersey has previously said a total smoking ban would chase business to other states, jeopardizing jobs and state tax revenue.

Burzichelli’s bill was referred to the same state Senate committee that last month advanced the total smoking ban bill. He said he has not counted heads to see how much support his bill has. It is not currently scheduled for a hearing.

Casinos were specifically exempted from New Jersey’s 2006 law that banned smoking in virtually all other workplaces.