Do you enjoy a smoke while gambling? Well if you do you will have less room to do it in Atlantic City's casinos thanks to a new law passed yesterday.
The new law limits smoking to 1/4 of the casinos floor, and the law goes into affect on April 15 2007.
The city council was expected to pass a bill banning all smoking in casinos as they did last year for restaurants and bars. The City Council decided changed the bill from a ban to limiting the designated smoking areas in the casinos out of fear of losing up to 20 percent of their business to neighboring states who still allow smoking in the casinos. Loss of that much revenue could force the casinos to cut up to 3,400 jobs from the city's 11 casinos.
Last April the city passed a law banning smoking in bars and restaurants but made the casinos exempt.
The casinos agreed to this compromise because they will not lose as much business as a full fledge smoking ban would lose them, but the non smoking casino employees and ant smoking groups feel as if the city has betrayed them.
One casino worker said she was not happy because every other restaurant and bar employee in the state gets to breathe fresh air, and the anti smoking groups said they would continue to fight for the rights of casino workers to breathe fresh air at work.
