STEVE RUDDOCK: Today’s guest is Cynthia Hallett, the president and CEO of the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation.
So Cynthia, why don’t you introduce yourself to my listeners?
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Great, thanks, Steve. My name is Cynthia Hallett. I am president and CEO of Americans for Nonsmokers Rights and the ANR Foundation.
STEVE RUDDOCK: All right, that could be the shortest intro in the history of the podcast, leaving more time for talk, all right. So for anybody who does not know if I’ve even talked about this on the podcast-I secondhand smoked probably like three packs of cigarettes for most of my childhood. I have a very bad sensitivity to cigarette smoke. So if I even smell cigarette smoke, I usually start coughing.
One of the things that gets in the way of this is casino visits. So I actually don’t like being on casino floors, smoking casinos. I was always thankful that Foxwood’s poker room was in their non-smoking casino section. Yeah, and there’s a big, it’s actually many years going now of casino employees in different groups really fighting to end smoking in casinos. A few states have these very strange loopholes that allow casinos to bypass no smoking indoor bans. Cynthia, your group is one of those that is taking on this challenge. I’d love to hear more about it.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Sure, well, for a little bit of background, Americans for nonsmokers rights was established in 1986, a time when we didn’t have as much information, scientific evidence about the health effects of secondhand smoke. And I think your example of just, you know, immediately feeling sick and ill, while that’s your personal experience, there’s evidence and rationale for why that’s the case. I mean, certainly secondhand smoke contains a mix of chemicals and toxins and carcinogens and so on. And so that’s why ANR over its nearly five decades has worked to clear the air of secondhand smoke.
And initially, we thought maybe sections were sufficient. And over time, again, as more research came in, the evidence became clear that really the only way to protect people from a known carcinogen was to be 100% smoke-free indoors.
So over the course of time in the 90s is when I started my career. I was always interested in cancer control and prevention, and I was a research fellow at the National Cancer Institute at a time when NCI started, you know, above and beyond its innovative cancer treatment and research, really looking at prevention issues. And that struck me. It’s like, how do we prevent disease from ever happening? And so there was this emphasis, not only on, of course, helping smokers to quit or preventing youth from starting to smoke, but really looking at environmental policy. What would be the impact if we removed the pollutant from the indoor air environment? And really, we started to discover that almost immediately health improved. And it could be everything from people weren’t coughing as much, asthmatics, it didn’t trigger an asthma attack, no more headaches or eye watering.
And so that was really, that’s what sparked my interest and passion in trying to work on eliminating secondhand smoke from indoor air environments. I had grandparents who smoked and I also knew how hard it was for wanted to quit smoking, but, you know, it’s hard. Nicotine is addictive. Now, 1990 is significant. In 1990, a very significant piece of legislation was passed, and that was the law that got smoking off of all domestic airline flights. At the time, ANR worked on Capitol Hill with some of our other partners to lobby for legislation, but equally important is that we worked with flight attendants, the people whose workplaces were filled with smoke, that even though there were quote unquote sections, whether it was the left side of the plane or the right side of the plane that allowed smoking or no smoking or the front and the back. And we got a phone call. We got a phone call from a very disgruntled flight attendant who said, “ANR is doing great work “and you’re making workplaces on the ground smoke-free, “but what about mine?” We thought, “Oh, airlines, and after doing some research, and after talking to flight attendants, and after talking with our members, asking if they would help support us to wage a federal campaign, you know, we had public support, we knew to move forward. And so in February 2025, it will be 35 years that there has been no smoking on domestic flights. I raise that because, at the time, we were told, “What are you doing? Nobody’s gonna fly. We are gonna lose business. You’re gonna kill an entire industry and nobody’s gonna travel by air anymore.” And obviously, that has not been the case. We heard similar stories when we started working in restaurants, trying to make them smoke-free, similarly in bars. I mean, because clearly, the misinformation was everybody who goes to a bar smokes, which is not the case. And then now fast forward to the early 2000s, we got a phone call from a Las Vegas-based blackjack dealer saying, again, “You’ve done great things, local laws, state laws, the airlines. What about my workplace? I’m a blackjack dealer in Vegas. I have to deal with smoke every day.” And that’s really when we launched our foray into learning about the casino industry. At its heart, ANR is a grassroots organization working at the community level. And we wanted to learn about the casino industry as a community. So we started going to the Global Gaming Expo. We would go to the Southern Gaming Summit, the East Coast Gaming Congress, and a variety of different meetings to learn about the industry. And we were frequently asked, “What are you selling? Why are you here?” And we were like, “We’re here to sell good health. We’re here to help you bring more people into your casinos”- because even in the early 2000s, the smoking rate was on a rapid decline. And today, only 11% of U.S. adults are smokers, and about 7–9% of U.S. adults vape using electronic smoking devices. So really going smoke-free is a way to open your doors to more customers into the casino, whether they’re there to gamble or to enjoy the other amenities like restaurants, bars, entertainment, etc.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, and it’s interesting to me because just going back to your bar analogy, so I’m in Massachusetts and I remember when they did the smoking ban in bars and restaurants, and so my dad was a member of a social club, and they were able to bypass that ban. So they were able to actually get the loophole for that. I believe they still do. I haven’t been in there in years, but I’m pretty sure that as long as you’re a private membership club in Massachusetts, you can allow smoking indoors. And yeah, and it’s interesting because, to your point, a small percentage of people still smoke. But I’d actually wonder how many of those people have to smoke within a 4 hour period. I’m sure that group is even much smaller than people who were like, I cannot go somewhere unless I can smoke.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: I think you’re right. You know, what we’re finding is that there have been a number of public opinion surveys and other players club surveys that have been done among those who gamble, asking, “First of all, are you a smoker or not?”
It could be a current smoker, former smoker, or never smoker. And then asking questions like, “How likely would you be to come back into this casino if it were 100% smoke-free? Would you support a smoke-free casino? And if there were outdoor spaces where you could step away to smoke and come back, what’s the favorability there?” What we’re finding across the board is that, and these are recent surveys done within the last year or two roughly somewhere between 75% and 86% of players support 100% smoke-free casinos and a very small percentage of them are smokers. Now, these are surveys that had large sample sizes to whether it was 2100 people or up to like 8500 or more players at one particular casino, and what we’re finding is that, when you survey and you ask the question, you find that the percent of the players who are smokers is very low and so, again, I think this antiquated thinking of like “We’ve got to provide indoor smoking spaces and gambling spaces for our players”-It’s not the case because fewer people smoke, and many are willing to go step outside. We support building those outdoor spaces, preferably without gaming spaces where you need to staff them. Because again, at the heart of this issue, the intent and purpose of these smoke-free indoor air laws is to protect worker health and safety. You know, yes, casinos are businesses. Yes, you need to have players to generate business, but really a casino couldn’t operate without the employees, you know, they’re there to, whether it’s to actually deal the game or to clean up the areas or to serve beverages, you know, the employees are the heart of the casino. And they are highly skilled people. I think one of the things that kind of irks me, and I’ve been, again, since I’ve been doing this since the 90s, you know, the argument that, well, if employees don’t like it, they can go work somewhere else. First of all, no one should have to choose between their health and a paycheck. Secondly, these are highly skilled workers, particularly those who are doing the games. They’ve got to learn the game. They’ve got to be charming and engaging to keep people playing, even when perhaps they’re not doing very well. Many of them have great senses of humor, good conversationalists, And they have to manage a table with thousands and thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in chips on their table. So I mean, these are highly skilled employees who really should not, again, have to choose between their health and a paycheck, and just have the basic protections that in many states other employees already have.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, that’s such a good point. Anecdotally, when I used to play poker at Foxwoods, this was back in, this was 20 years ago.
You knew who was the smokers at the table. They would get up every half hour or so, they’d come back, and you’d have that thing with smoke on them, but Foxwoods had it. The poker room was in a smoke-free area. They still went. They still played the games. They just got up every now and then. But to your point about the dealers and everything that is out there, I’ve worked in customer service. That is such a hard job. And if you had me working in customer service where I had to be exposed to cigarette smoke, I would go somewhere else. So you are going to lose a certain amount of good employees that are probably more beneficial to your business than saving customers who you think might leave otherwise.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Right. I mean, the investment, both in terms of financial investment and time to train new employees is pretty steep. And it is also true that you know, a lot of casinos right now as we’re proposing legislation or the workers are advocating strongly for those same fair basic protections, it’s like, oh, we’re gonna have to lay people off. If you go back and look at some of these, either casino properties or within a state, they’re already at a deficit in terms of the gaps in employee coverage because I think as a result of COVID, many people who are able to work from home, you know, are enjoying that opportunity and being productive at it. So folks don’t want to go back into a workplace where they’re walking into a risky situation. You know, we’ve heard from Las Vegas dealers who are saying, or actually, it was even the labor union at UAW talking about the number of vacant positions in a variety of casinos across Las Vegas. And a lot of it’s because they’re just not having the environment that they wanna work in. And so many employees, you know, we’ve heard it so many times where it’s like, “I love my job, I love the people I get to meet, I love the excitement of the game. The only thing I hate is the smoke.” For so many employees, again, COVID and having to shut down temporarily and then reopen with safe, healthy policies like mask mandates, which then basically meant you could not smoke. You know, if you’re wearing a mask, you can’t pull it down to inhale and then exhale, not just secondhand smoke or the secondhand aerosol from an e-cigarette, but respiratory droplets that could potentially contain the virus. You know, you couldn’t do it. So there was this natural experiment where casinos got to see what it’s like to operate smoke-free, got to see that people still came and that their employees, the morale, the attendance was better than ever. And then to pull the carpet out from underneath them and then reinstate smoking just was a slap in the face, some have said, and just disrespectful because they had the opportunity to experience what it was like to operate as a smoke-free casino and that the gaming employees on the gaming floor finally got to have the same privilege to work in a smoke-free environment as the executives did upstairs in their office or elsewhere. Or, you know, even the restaurants, many times in the casinos, the restaurants and the bars are smoke-free. Now, granted, I should say non-smoking because the smoke will drift. So the smoke from the gaming floor is going to drift into the restaurants and bars, but it’s not like individuals are having smoke directly, often blown in their faces.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, as somebody’s, oh, go ahead.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: No, I was gonna say, one other thing is you know, you talked about the poker rooms and it’s very interesting ‘cause again, one of the arguments that we’ll sometimes often get from casinos is that you know, “our whales, they all smoke and we’re going to need to accommodate them because they are our bread and butter. “But, you know, if you think about it, the poker rooms and the poker tournaments really are big revenue generators for casinos. And again, it was a poker player or two who, again, for Las Vegas, what is it? The World Series of Poker, said “I don’t want to sit in the smoke when I’m playing hours and hours and hours and hours.” Now that’s a player. Can you imagine the employees having to work like that every single day? So again, we’ve had these opportunities where casinos have experienced that they successfully operate without smoking. And many of, yeah, sorry, they’ve had these opportunities where they could operate successfully as smoke-free. And so again, my passion and frustration can sort of interrupt me at times when it’s just frustrating. I don’t understand, there’s no logic. I think it’s just this theory and this feeling that you know, casinos have always operated as smoke-filled and so therefore we need to do that. What is encouraging is that there are 20 states that now require their commercial casinos to be 100% smoke-free indoors. And there are about 158 or so tribal casinos, sovereign nations that, either through a policy or a tribal-wide policy or regulation or voluntarily, are operating smoke-free. And again, during COVID the tribes really led the way by reopening requiring masks and not allowing smoking and sort of setting the tone so some of the arguments about you know well “we’ve got competition from the tribes” is no longer an argument it’s moot some of the arguments that “well you know if we go smoke-free people won’t come” well we’ve seen that happen not only just from their own personal experience. But again, through data, you know, we’ve got data now that says the public supports going smoke-free and they’re willing to go into a smoke-free casino. Employees really want it. They feel better both physically and mentally. Labor unions, for the most part, are supportive of going smoke-free because obviously, we’re removing a risk to their health and safety. And so that’s got to be good for their employees. And then we’ve also got the economic data. You know, that’s always been the biggest thing is that casinos are businesses, and it’s all about the revenue. Well, sure, there are there’s evidence from a variety of studies and especially one that was done by an Independent-C3 Gaming based in Las Vegas-that usually does research for the industry that again, because of COVID, was able to do an experiment looking at several properties that found that those properties did just as well, if not better, those properties that were smoke-free and the stayed smoke-free performed better if they were smoke-free compared to their counterparts who still allowed smoking. And then recently, I was on a panel at G2E, moderating a panel on insights for non-smoking casinos and we had a representatives from Foxwoods and we had a representative from Potawatomi who because of COVID went smoke-free and remained smoke-free. And again, their evidence was that people still come, they prefer it. Foxwoods, it was great that they had done surveys pre- and post-COVID. And so prior to COVID, 68% of their players supported smoke-free casinos. Post-COVID, it’s up to 78% or more. So, you know, we know that there’s evidence, and both of them, which I thought was encouraging, both of them are expanding. They’re renovating and expanding. So we know that smoke-free casinos are good for health and good for business.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, it’s, poker’s a great microcosm of this because if I recall correctly, ‘cause I’m going back years now, now. When those initial smoking bans and poker rooms were coming about, the game quickly boomed after that for other reasons, not because of that, but because there seemed to be something to me. You referenced that study, and I could be mistaking studies or combining some, but I believe that there was a study that also said there were fewer visitors post-COVID, but those visitors were staying longer and spending more. And to me, like some people would frame that as a bad thing, but I would almost question, well, is that because they’re having more enjoyment and one of those aspects might be, there’s no smoke here. I’m not developing a cough after two hours and having to leave.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: I agree. I think that, you know, you’re absolutely right, that’s why folks are staying longer. It was interesting because we used to hear the argument that players who smoked were more valuable because they had longer play a game. And I would always ask the question as somebody who was a nonsmoker, you know, I used to like to play blackjack, I had kids and needed to not lose money. But, you know, if somebody sat next to me and started to smoke, I would end my play because I just couldn’t do it. So I think that there’s a lot to be set for that.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, it’s, again, just ‘cause it’s my experience, but poker was, so I started playing poker in the late ‘90s before it was popular. And I used to spend a lot of time in the backrooms of bars. And if you wanna find a group of people that should be smoking all the time, it’s poker players ‘cause they don’t have much to do. There’s a lot of waiting around for hands to finish. So the fact that poker rooms were able to go smoke-free and not only keep their customers but increase their customer base during this time. It should be a signal that if poker players can do it, then these other customers who are playing blackjack, a much faster-paced game, different games, different paces of speed, slot machines very fast, they really, you should be occupied. It shouldn’t be something where you’re like, “Man, I’m sitting here for a minute.” If you go into a poker room now, they have racing forms out, they have newspapers and magazines, and they’re just waiting for something to do. You get Delta maybe 30 hands an hour if you get a great dealer. So once a minute, you’re folding and then you’re waiting a minute. Seems like the perfect smoking opportunity and it’s been able to thrive. Poker rooms are able to thrive without it.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Again, for us, this isn’t an issue of smokers against nonsmokers. We know that the tobacco industry knowingly and willingly made a very addictive product. And so I know you were asking earlier, it’s like if people can’t go four hours, but there are options. There are ways to accommodate those who need or want to, you know, have a cigarette. And so again, there are ways to build those outdoor patios where people can go outside and we’ve got a lot of examples, you know, not just in sunny, temperate weather places, but also in those states that have winter. We were just in Philadelphia and we got to visit the Parks Casino, which is 100% smoke-free, beautiful property. It was a wednesday night. It was, you know, not jam-packed, but it was full at six o ‘clock. And we took sort of a short walk to go out to the patio, the smoking patio. And, you know, it’s nice. It’s got heaters. There are places for people to sit. You can take your beverage out there and have a cigarette and then quickly get right back in and play your game. The other idea is that you know, for some, you know, you can always, perhaps there’s perhaps there’s nicotine replacement therapies, if it’s really bad, the idea of getting a nicotine patch, which is over the counter. Not sure if people need that, but that’s an opportunity too. The other thing about providing people a place to step outside to go smoke is really looking at kind of the responsible gaming or problem gambling issue. And while it is not true that everybody who gambles smokes. But for those gamblers who do smoke and they need to take a break, that would be kind of this natural opportunity to step away from the game, evaluate whether or not you want to go back and play, and then go back and, you know, go back into the casino. We have, I think one of the things that we found is that, you know, permitting indoor smoking really does discourage smokers who gamble from taking that break and that is one of the key tenants of responsible gaming is taking a break.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah there’s definitely from what I’ve seen the evidence that there’s a high comorbidity between the two activities smoking and probably gambling and obviously like you, the casinos will phrase it as our whales like to smoke, but there could be something to say there that, well, maybe it’s not just the whales and having that option of, you know what, I need to get up, have my nicotine break, clear my head for 45 seconds, then make a decision like, you know what, I’m not going to go back that way. I’m going to go that way to the car garage.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Right. Yeah. And I think there was a report that came out where I think that they admitted sort of unwittingly that by allowing indoor smoking, it furthers gambling addiction. And so again, you know, the longer somebody sits in plays, the more revenue is generated for the casino. So I think that we really need to evaluate the potential opportunities for helping the industry abide by its commitment to be kind of a solution to the problem gaming situation and not part of the problem. And it’s encouraging that one of our partners, the National Council of Problem Gaming, also agrees that having a smoke-free policy, it would sort of naturally create that opportunity to take a break from the gaming and potentially help with the issue. So the net benefit for addressing problem gaming as well as improving public health.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, and Keith has been on the podcast previously.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Great, yes.
STEVE RUDDOCK: So earlier you mentioned labor unions are largely on your side. My knowledge of the situation, which is just kind of what I follow, is that New Jersey has a little bit of a rift between their labor unions. One union believes that it will cost jobs because basically echoing the casino’s talking points that there’ll be less gamblers, and less revenue, therefore we have to cut jobs, basically. Is it just that they’re expressing concerns over the job market? Is there something else going on under the surface? How did that end up happening in New Jersey?
CYNTHIA HALLETT: That’s a good question. I mean, I do think that, you know, over the decades there has been this myth perpetrated by the tobacco industry saying whether you’re a restaurant or a bar or another industry you will lose 30% of your business and there was an article of all things in Consumer Reports. Remember Consumer Reports? They would evaluate, you know, various products and things and it said that that was a made-up number that there’s no evidence that these businesses are going to lose 30% of their business. But I feel like there is this, this desire, or this sort of fear. And so it’s easier to believe the fear rather than committing to it. Now, what’s interesting is that so UAW has been a partner with CEASE, and CEASE is the Casino Employees Against Smoking Effects. CEASE first was born in New Jersey in the summer of 2021. Again, those were some of the employees who got to have a smoke-free workplace during COVID-19. And as soon as the mask mandate was removed, the casinos decided that they would reinstate smoking on the floor. And those dealers could not understand why. So just through talking to one another, they banded together and created a coalition of workers called CEASE. ANR, as part of a national organization, you know, working with various groups, reached out to them, and we started to collaborate to give them some information, you know, again, trends, health effects of secondhand smoke, and so on. And then UAW came to the issue as a result of this worker health and safety issue and really got involved and brought a new partnership or new diverse membership to this coalition and some muscle. So we were doing all of the right things. We were working through the legislative process. We had community education, legislator education and just trying to get a strong bill through the legislature. And as you said, sort of Local 54, leadership was opposing the law, again, for fear of losing business. Now, what’s interesting is that many members of Local 54 are also members of CEASE. And this is something that we’ve seen across a lot of campaigns. Next year is the 10-year anniversary of smoke-free, New Orleans. At the time, Harris, now Caeser’s, bused employees, but they brought employees down the block to go to the city council meeting to sit there to show sort of this unified front against going smoke-free. But many of the employees there had been in communication with the coalition and in communication with the city council members saying we were forced to be here. So again, I think that while leadership of Local 54 is touting these old myths. I think that a lot of individuals really support the smoke-free law. And Local 54 represents more of the restaurant workers, not the people on the gaming floor who are being directly exposed. So UAW has been a wonderful partner bringing in their organizing skills, their leadership, and really adding some muscle to the campaign.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, and not to get into union politics or anything. I don’t feel like getting buried in a backyard somewhere, but Atlantic City has a very tenuous relationship with its unions, the Atlantic City casinos, they’re often on strike, and they’re constantly renegotiating contracts. It seems like something that a local union could, a casino could use against a local union like, hey, we’re totally opposed to this. Your next contract renegotiation is going to be a nightmare type of thing where, I mean, not to, I’m just throwing things out because it’s just how things work in the world. I don’t think anybody’s going to disagree with that, but it’s something where that relationship in New Jersey is always a mess. I don’t think I’ve ever been to Atlantic City without seeing one of the casinos on strike. Granted, it’s been a while since I’ve been there, but it was always one of the casinos.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Yeah, you know, and that’s a shame. We heard from the UAW president in Las Vegas just last week that if employees were happy, you know, with their workplace, if they had a smoke-free workplace, you know, there would be no reason to have to rally or protest.
Again, these workers in New Jersey had never had to have a rally and talk about the smoke-free issue until after COVID. And again, it was sort of the irony that like, they didn’t understand why they couldn’t have remained smoke-free given the experience that had.
And just, you know, for the record, I mean, UAW, even though it is the United Auto Workers Union, they represents table games dealers in Pennsylvania, in Las Vegas, and several other states. So it was just interesting that, you know, for me, certainly as somebody more in the public health world was not familiar that UAW would also represent table gaming dealers, but they represent a variety of workers. Because again, you know, as they say, they really are working for the health and dignity of these workers.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, and so New Jersey is definitely one of these, I’ll just call it a battleground state where I’m almost at the election. So I guess I can use that time. Pennsylvania is another one. I’ve seen some hay being made in Nevada. Are there any other states that are really getting on this?
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, New Jersey certainly is, I think, the most prominent because this is a campaign that we’ve engaged in since, you know, basically early 2022, followed by we’ve got Rhode Island. Rhode Island, much like New Jersey, has a statewide smoke-free workplace law, which covers workplace restaurants and bars. But, you know, 16 or so years ago when that smoke-free workplace law was put in effect, they exempted the casinos. So it’s high time that we include the casinos. There have been several other states as I said of the 20 states that require commercial casinos to be smoke-free. Some of them were new states like you’ve mentioned: Massachusetts Maryland and Ohio. Other states are those that had smoking and that went smoke-free. So whether they’re tiny gaming states like Delaware, which was one of the four first that went from smoke-filled to the smoke-free. We had Colorado in Illinois, which, you know, happened to do it just as we were experiencing the Great Recession. And those states continue to do, you know, positive business. They’re expanding in some places. So, you know, we know that going smoke-free will help. And so New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, we’re also seeing movement in Kansas. And then there’s some rumblings of interest in other places we know that locally in Louisiana you know New Orleans and Baton Rouge have smoke-free casino laws but those are some of the main places where I think we have a good opportunity and again when we think about that little region you know New York and is creating a lot of competition for New Jersey. Parks as I said in Pennsylvania voluntarily went smoke-free and have stayed that way It would be ideal if Pennsylvania, you know would pass a statewide law because then we would create parity across the state where all casinos need to be smoke-free and then again fairly protect all of those workers. Rhode Island, I think there’s a lot of good potential Again, we’ve had some movement. It’ll just say it’s shameful that it’s taking so long and that logic isn’t winning the day. It’s very much all about politics, which shouldn’t surprise us. But again, we’re using sort of all the tools in the toolbox, if you will. We’re trying to, again, do the right thing working through the legislative process. It’s unfortunate that in New Jersey because of essentially the stalemate that UAW would cease while the lawsuit requires the state to immediately make the casino smoke-free so that they can have the same protections as every other worker in New Jersey. And then also in a sort of different approach, ANR Foundation has taken on the shareholder advocacy, shareholder engagement approach, whereby we filed three resolutions for the first time this year. And all we were asking was for the casinos to study. It’s like, “What’s the cost of keeping smoking in your casinos?” There was no policy change required.
But a lot of times, we feel that the properties or the industry just don’t ask the questions that they don’t want the answers to. So we did well. There were over 57 million voters between the three companies. It was Valleys, Void, and Caesars where we had filed the resolutions. And we easily surpassed the 5% vote yes vote or support vote threshold that’s required. So again, taking it from all the angles, it’s the grassroots, it’s the lobbying, it’s legal, it’s this shareholder engagement to kind of create enough noise and pressure so industry and the government understand that, you know, there’s an injustice that needs to be resolved and these workers deserve protection.
STEVE RUDDOCK: I was going to say, I’m so I’m in the, I do a lot with online gambling. So it’s when I look at it there’s a cannibalization debate going on it does online take away from land based and earlier you threw out that 30% figure. And it’s funny because that is used for everything. So a new casino opens in Massachusetts, Connecticut casinos will lose 30% of their business. Online gambling coming along, and they’re going to lose 30% of our land base. It seems like that’s just a really nice little number that people can throw around. But yeah, it’s got a similar feel to it. And one of the things is you mentioned Illinois and another state that did this right during the recession. So what happens is you get these funny revenue numbers going forward after the ban is, and there’s a correlation causation problem. There was a casino in Atlantic City when it opened-Revel, which is now Ocean Casino and they went smoke-free. That was always said was one of their big falls. It turns out they had a lot of issues going on. Ocean somehow righted that ship after three other owners couldn’t. So it doesn’t seem like we tend to look at these things in a vacuum. “Well, oh, this casino went smoke-free and its revenue went down,” but nobody’s explaining exactly what else the market factors that are around that are doing.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Exactly, you know, again, going to the gaming industry meetings, it was really interesting to listen to folks talk about, you know, the issues that were most important to the industry, and sure they talked about online gaming. But usually, when they’re talking about revenue, it’s like the main factors that negatively affect gaming revenue are the economy and the weather. So the economy in general, because if people don’t have disposable income, they’re not going to come in and play, and the weather. So for businesses that are usually open 24/7, if you have a hurricane, or I remember going to a gaming meeting shortly after the polar vortex, and so that meant some of the casinos in the Northeast had to close for three days. And they’re like, that doesn’t just blow our month, it blows our quarter. But never once do people, without prompting, say anything about smoke-free. And when you look at the economic data, if you can get it, you know, when we look at revenue, casinos are a volatile industry.
You know, you have the highs and the lows and business goes up and down. And again, it could be seasonality, maybe at the beginning of the year, people are like New Year’s resolution, “I’m gonna,” you know, “I’m not gonna drink, I’m not gonna lose weight, I’m not gonna gamble.” So, you know, you see a dip and revenue and it goes back up and if you look at some of the revenue charts whether it was New Orleans or Shreveport or some of these other places the revenue goes up and down up and down and when you put the line of when the smoke-free law went into effect it goes up it goes down it goes up because it’s not about the law it’s about the business in general and not smoke-free.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah it’s the the analogy I always use is people will say, “Oh, look, gambling revenue was down year over year.” That’s, why people love the year over year, month over month is really, really messy. The year-over-year was down. And then the first thing I always look at is how many weekends were in the month? ‘Cause the year before there might’ve been five, there might’ve been five full weekends, this one there might’ve been four or four and a half. And to your point, That’s like a day, that’s like a Monday, having an extra, you know, half of a weekend day is like having two weekdays. So it’s interesting when people tend to get really focused on just this zooming in on very specific data analysis and they don’t pan out a little bit and understand like “What was the trend before that? What was happening in it before that? Was it already in decline?” and now you’re just showing me the chart from smoking ban to now and before that the decline was even steeper so is it starting to level off or is all of these different things that I mean deal with numbers I can make a chart say whatever I want it to.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Well you know and with prevention it’s always hard to talk about you know lives saved or you know incidents that you avoided. And so we, again, at the G2E panel, we heard the comment that there are other ways to measure the economic impact. And what about cost savings? What do we save when we’re smoke-free because we don’t have to clean the carpets, the drapes, or the felts on the tables? We don’t have to replace the cigarette-burnt felts or whatever else. And the other one that was interesting was, and again, this was as a result of going smoke-free. It’s like, you know, “We didn’t know how many people were not coming in because they couldn’t or wouldn’t.” You know, so you do, you have asthmatics who just cannot go into a smoke-filled environment because it could trigger an asthma attack. You’ve got cardiac rehabilitation patients who have been told, you know, CDC had a warning several, what, a decade or so back, saying if you’ve had a heart attack, you need to avoid smoke-filled environments because that’s a risk factor. So it’s sometimes hard to measure that which you don’t know, which are the people who are not coming in because they can’t or they won’t. So there are a lot of cost savings and missed opportunities, again, given that the majority of the population does not smoke and frequently, especially, I’m not talking about Vegas or even Atlantic City, but for many places, the casino is either, A, the best place of employment, because it’s like the biggest or the only place, and it’s the best place and source of entertainment or dining and so on. So there are a lot of opportunities and people who can come into the casino. But again, you can open your door. Everybody can come in if you’re smoke-free. If you smoke, you just step outside.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, and you didn’t even mention the smoke eaters and deletion systems that they install into the casino, saying it works, but as somebody who’s very sensitive to smoke, it doesn’t, it’s still there. And to your point, like carpets gotta be changed, people drop cigarettes, they burn, they do all these things. There’s a lot happening there. I’d be curious, like for a piece of data, I don’t know, maybe you can push people to get this? What customer loyalty club cards look like is the enrollment, new enrollment-post the smoke-free. Does that go up? Because obviously, you might have this new influx of people coming into the fold that you didn’t have before. So you might see, well, we usually get, you know, 2% of our enrollment or whatever. And then now we’re noticing it’s 28% since we’ve done this. Does that show you and how many you could also like juxtapose that against how many people that were loyal, always coming in once a month or more, are now missing? How many of those people are MIA? I think you suppose data put against one another to figure out, is this, you know, neutral? Is it positive?
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Yeah, that’s a good question And I’m not sure if properties are asking that question. That’s not something that I have. But to go back to what we were talking about earlier and especially ventilation. I mean, ventilation has long been a quote unquote solution offered by the industry, whether it was the tobacco industry or now the casino industry to say that that’s a way to mitigate the problems with secondhand smoke. And unfortunately, it’s not, you know, ventilation only deals with comfort and odor, you know, it’s a temperature, the way it’s, you know, where it should be, is it comfortable? Can you smell like a wood-burning oven? But ASHRAE, which is the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers, they’re the international standard setting body for ventilation. And they had a committee specifically focused on acceptable indoor air quality. And it took until 2006 after years and years and years. It’s a consensus-setting, policy-making body. And it wasn’t until the 2006 Surgeon General’s report that they agreed that there is no cognizant authority who could say how much secondhand smoke was acceptable to be exposed to. ASHRAE now through their standard 62.1, not to get too wonky, but it is based on an entirely smoke-free and vape-free environment because there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke and ventilation cannot get rid of the toxins, the chemicals, the particulates that are hazardous to public health. And, you know, they also have been, they sent a letter to the New Jersey Legislature stating what ventilation can and cannot do. So I think that you know, trying to use ventilation or smoke eaters, it’s unfortunately not enough to, you know, get rid of the secondhand smoke and create a safe environment.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah. And from a commonsense perspective, if that created a smoke-free environment, why would some casinos have smoke-free sections and ventilated related sections, doesn’t make any sense.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Yeah, and back to the cost issue. I mean, in order to create, you know, enough air exchanges, first of all, you’d have to have, I think one engineer once said like a hurricane force, you know, exchange of air to try to get rid of the smoke, which would still not get rid of the gases and toxins, but then it’d be very expensive. You know, the frequency with which you have to change your air filters when you have a smoke-filled casino is very expensive. And just the reality is that they’re not changed often enough. So ventilation, unfortunately, is not a solution. So that’s costly. And then also going back to some of the cost savings-again, we heard from Parks that they had approximately 40% savings or a reduction in health insurance because their employees were no longer working again in an environment that was created risk by exposing them to secondhand smoke. So you will have cost savings in terms of your health insurance premiums, your cleaning costs, your employee turnover, and the need to train them. There are a lot of ways to save money.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, it seems, I don’t know, it’s an annoyance to me. Like I said, I think off camera I said it’s one of my biggest problems is smoking. I can’t deal with cigarette smoke, super sensitive to it. And it just seems like such an easy, especially post-COVID, like you’ve been saying, it seems like they could have just said, you know what, who’s even going to know now that we’ve changed? But then they changed back the policy and now they’d have to change it again. Is there just kind of maybe a perception issue to this whole thing that they’re worried about, that you’re kind of moving somebody from, oh no, we’re smoke-free, we’re going to annoy you with that, oh no, now we’re back to smoking, so now we’re going to annoy this group, let’s go back and annoy the other group for a minute, is it maybe that’s some of that going on in their thinking?
CYNTHIA HALLETT: You know, times have changed and for an industry that frequently, you know, shows its creativity, talks about innovations, really trying to adjust to the new environments and adapting to, you know, other issues, whether it’s just what’s popular, or other sort of regulatory changes, it just seems like it’s time to make the change and to make the commitment to it. You know, public perceptions have changed, and public demands have changed. There is so much evidence that going smoke-free helps that, yeah, it’s time to let go of these antiquated sorts of practices and fears and to just innovate and go smoke-free.
STEVE RUDDOCK: That would be a great argument for about seven things going on in the industry right now. It’s time to get rid of the fear.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Yeah, well, and you know, we’re not naive. I, Again, we are not anti-industry, we’re pro-health, and we’re here to help. I mean, for what it’s worth, we have a list of all of the smoke-free casinos, you know, a smoke-free directory, and it’s a way to drive people to go to those sites. You know, it may seem outlandish, but yeah, people call us and they say, “I want to go to a smoke-free restaurant,” or “I want to go to whatever.” So we don’t have a list of restaurants because there are so many. But we can tell you by location, which city or state requires, you know, restaurants to be smoke-free by law. Similarly with casinos, but because there are some individual properties that are doing it, we have that directory. We have experience working directly with casinos in terms of how to, you know, communicate that the property is smoke-free. You know, signage is everything. You know, putting it on the slot machines like Parks Casino is doing is just a reminder that it’s smoke-free, and perhaps why. Building those patios, which you do not have to spend millions of dollars to do the patio, I mean, unless you want to, but it’s a very simple, straightforward idea. And there are architects who now specialize in designing outdoor smoking patios You know, there’s, there are a lot of resources, there’s a lot of lessons learned, there’s so much evidence that, yeah, I think, you know, unfortunately for some, we are still up against a very powerful industry in the gaming industry. And so we’re going to need to overcome that. But I’ll go, Pollyanna, I do think that we do have, you know, the people power and strong voices, those individuals who work in those buildings again, who love their job but hate the smoke. And hopefully, with persistence and pressure, we will achieve smoke for casinos.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, and it seems like your experience over the years is that the change will happen, but yeah, it takes a little bit of work. My friend, Richard Shoots, who writes about this a lot, former, I don’t know if you know Richard.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Yes.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, so he has a great idea, which is just to move the executive offices down to the smoking casino floor and let them deal with it for a couple of weeks and see what their attitudes towards it change.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Yeah, you know, it is interesting. We do, even for some individuals that we work with, it’s like if they’ve never, sometimes they think that the fight is over, and they’re like, wait, what do you mean they’re still smoking in bars or casinos in these different places? And so until they have that exposure and the realization that this is still occurring, you know, it’s kind of out of sight, out of mind. So I do think having some personal experience, spending some time, talking to the employees on the floor, see what it’s like during a really busy game, or again, a weekend night when there are a lot of people. And truthfully, again, because fewer people are smoking and really fewer gamblers are smoking, there have been other research done looking at the indoor air quality in individual casinos. And there were recently two studies done, one in Reno, and they do sort of the air quality testing. And they found that the amount of secondhand smoke or the particulates and so on in Reno casinos that allowed smoking was 18 times higher than, you know, smoke-free. And that on the Las Vegas Strip, there were eight casinos that were studied, seven allowed smoking, one was smoke-free, and it was 5.4 times higher of the indoor air pollution. And I mean at levels that are considered hazardous or very hazardous by the EPA for outdoor air. So imagine now those levels of exposure in an enclosed indoor environment. So there is significant exposure and unhealthy exposure in those environments. So yeah, you know, maybe having a little bit of experience.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, I mean, from my, from my own experience, if I, if you go to one of the newer casinos, notice the ceilings are a bit higher. If you go to Treasure Island, TI, I think it’s called now. If you go there, they’re very low ceilings, like my house's low ceilings, and you can smell the smoke so much more in that casino. And I’m sure the ventilation systems are all the same. It’s just a matter of how the casino was built, what it is. I think a very good experiment would just be to call one of the dealers that has just worked a shift up to your office and see if you can smell smoke on them. ‘Cause I bet you can. That their clothes smell of smoke a little bit.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: You know, I’ll say that there have been folks along the years who have said, you know, “I get it. I support you, but we could never do it at our casino.” And when you ask why it’s like well, you know, and it again goes back to that fear of the unknown and I think, you know, it’s sort of that we don’t want to / if it ain’t broke Don’t fix it in terms of the revenue side of things, but they’re not understanding that there’s so much else that’s broken and dismantled. Time to make that bold move. Casinos will spend millions if not billions to renovate, to modernize the casino, to be more amenable to certain generations, or to put in brand new machines every year. Going smoke-free would cost substantially less and you could then as I was saying earlier have that opportunity to have more people come through your doors to partake and enjoy and you know Make their contribution to the casino if it were smoke-free.
STEVE RUDDOCK: All right, I’m sold. It’s done. I’ll make some calls after this and hopefully it’s finished but anything else? So what last question where do you see us in five years? Do you think we’ll be almost completely smoke-free? Do you think there’ll be holdouts?
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Well, you know, a lot of folks have said Las Vegas or Nevada will never go smoke-free. And there was a poll conducted that gives us confidence and encouragement that that really is not the case. So 60%. We’ve had a 60% support rate for going smoke-free in Nevada casinos. And that was when we just asked the general question about support for going smoke-free. And then the pollster added questions that sort of utilized industry arguments like, “Oh, but what if we were going to lose business?” And even when we asked all, inserted those elements of the arguments that the industry likes to bring up, it really remained the same. It’s like 60% currently, without any campaign going forth right now, 60% of Nevadans would support going smoke-free in casinos and all workplaces. So five years. We got to think about when the legislatures meet. Yeah, I think we’re going to have it. I think we’re going to have that northeast region covered. We’re going to have, I’m just going to put it out there: New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania in five years will have a smoke-free workplace law and they will be smoke-free. And then Nevada is just going to… yeah, Nevada too.
STEVE RUDDOCK: No one will come back to this podcast in five years if there’s any misstatement. Cynthia, this was a great talk, very important issue. If anybody wants to get in touch with you, is there a best way to do that?
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Sure. We’ve got our email address for the organization is anr@no-smoke.org.
Or you can find us on the web, no-smoke.org. And we’ve got a Breathe Easy, Smoke-Free Casinos campaign. But yeah, we’re here to help. We want to be part of the solution and help this worker-led movement.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Awesome. I will put those in the show notes too if anybody wants to reach out. I feel like that’s one of those issues that personal stories tend to resonate a bit better.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: It really does. You know, people always know what I’m going to say coming in from Americans for Nonsmokers rights, but again, that reality check of a real person, whether it was a flight attendant, whether it’s a casino worker. Again, we work with musicians in Austin, in New Orleans, in Baton Rouge, and recently in Nashville, hearing the stories from those individuals who are most directly impacted are the strongest arguments. So again, while it seems monumental, a monumental task that we might not be able to achieve this. I think that we often are kind of a silent majority of nonsmokers who support smoke-free indoor air and we need to feel confident to say, you know, just to voice our support and to say, you know, “if you were smoke-free, we’d be more likely to come.” I mean, even as an organization, we hold our meetings in smoke-free cities and if for some reason the city is not yet smoke-free, we’ll hold it in a smoke-free, and by establishment, a hotel, meeting center, whatever it is. But again, while the industry says, if you go smoke-free, you’ll lose business. That’s tobacco industry. We say, if you go smoke-free, we’ll make sure we bring business. And there are a number of organizations who also have adopted that commitment to only have meetings in smoke-free cities.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Excellent. We will leave it there. Really, thank you for joining me today.
CYNTHIA HALLETT: Appreciate it. Thank you so much, Steve.
