Smoking foes: Make COVID casino smoking ban permanent in NJ

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Health advocates say New Jersey's temporary coronavirus-related ban on smoking in the Atlantic City casinos should be made permanent, and some state legislators said Thursday they will push to make that happen.

But the casinos say permanently banning smoking once the pandemic has ended will drive away customers, leading to job losses and lower tax revenue for the state. They say the gambling halls have invested heavily in air filtration equipment that renders the workspaces safe.

According to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation, casinos in 20 states are smoke-free, and three additional states — New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan — have enacted temporary virus-related smoking bans.

On the 15th anniversary of a state law that exempted Atlantic City casinos from a sweeping indoor smoking ban, opponents of smoking called for New Jersey's temporary ban to be made permanent.

“Casinos are learning to do business differently,” Bronson Frick, an official with the nonsmokers' rights group, said in an online news conference. “In the year 2021, we take for granted that airplanes and restaurants should be smoke-free, even though that change took place relatively recently.”

He said 1,100 casinos in the U.S. do not allow smoking. Smoking is allowed in Nevada, but companies are free to set their own policies and some ban it.

“We've seen it's possible for casinos to operate with smoking bans because they had no choice,” said New Jersey Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle.

She said the law passed in 2006 that exempted casinos prompted bills that would ban smoking in casinos in many subsequent years, but they went nowhere in the state Legislature.

“This time is definitely different,” she said. “For over a year, we've been...