Sunday, August 19, 2007

What? A smoke free casino? How lovely!!

I like gambling. In fact, I love playing Roulette and have started to learn to play Craps. I have some methods in place to keep it from becoming a problem-such as never taking my ATM card in with me and once I get “up” to a certain amount (usually double my money) I allow myself to continue to play until 3 losing spins/rolls/hands whatever. This way I don’t lose it all. What I don’t love about the casinos is that I feel the need to take a shower right when I get home because I smell like a lit cigarette.

Well, Illinois recently passed a public smoking ban which appears to include casinos. How progressive!! There is currently, of course, a bill in the process to allow casinos within 10 miles from a neighboring state that allows public smoking (such as the Casino Queen) to be exempt from the law. Not sure of the fate of that. Evidently people think the smoking ban will hurt the casino industry.

Some thoughts on this:

Those poor casinos-god forbid they make less money. I mean really, evidently the casino industry brings billions of dollars of revenue into the state of Missouri and its supposed to help education-yet MO has what, the 17th WORST quality of education in the country? Yeah, that means they are making bunches of money and not giving it back.

Am I the only person who’s excited about a smoke free casino??? Sure, the old people who play the penny slots might smoke a carton a day, but I swear I’ve seen people not smoking at casinos. Smoke free gamblers DO EXIST and gosh, maybe the thought of going to the casino and not coming home smelling like an ashtray appeals to people. Maybe so much that they might drive to the Casino Queen versus Ameristar to gamble in a smoke free environment. What a novel idea!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm with you! I am actually excited about going to a casino for dinner/gambling whatever and not having to worry about stinging eyes or whether or not to burn my clothes when I get home rather than try to get the wretched stench out. Still...I doubt my twice a year trips to the casino will be the needed attendence boost they'll want to make up for the angry smokers.