Smoke at the Casinos = Unhealthy

[TimeKeeper]

Do you guys realize that being around smoke each day can age you by about 8 years? Studies have shown that just being around second hand smoke for four hours is equivalent to a person smoking 16 cigarettes.

I am annoyed by the smoke at the casino. And sadly, I now am not sure I want to pursue casino blackjack because of this. They do have a non-smoking blackjack area at Foxwoods, but it's in the high roller area.

I never even thought about it when I first got into this. It wasn't until I watched the 'YOU' doctors Dr. Roizen and Dr. Oz on TV. It's in their book too. Second hand smoke is bad, bad, bad. It's actually now a law here in RI that smoking isn't allowed in public places.

 

[21forme]

Do you guys realize that being around smoke each day can age you by about 8 years? Studies have shown that just being around second hand smoke for four hours is equivalent to a person smoking 16 cigarettes.

I am annoyed by the smoke at the casino. And sadly, I now am not sure I want to pursue casino blackjack because of this. They do have a non-smoking blackjack area at Foxwoods, but it's in the high roller area.

I never even thought about it when I first got into this. It wasn't until I watched the 'YOU' doctors Dr. Roizen and Dr. Oz on TV. It's in their book too. Second hand smoke is bad, bad, bad. It's actually now a law here in RI that smoking isn't allowed in public places.

When I sit at a table, unless I wong in for a quick few hands, I'll only sit at a non-smoking table. If there aren't any available, I'll ask them to make it one.
NJ currently bans smoking in all public places except casinos. AC is considereing extending that to the casinos - I hope it happens.

In any case, as much as I hate the smoke, for the amount of time I spend playing, I'm not worried about the health aspects. After all, I live near a large city with less than ideal air everywhere, not the middle of Kansas.

 

[TENNBEAR]

Smoke Free

Do you guys realize that being around smoke each day can age you by about 8 years? Studies have shown that just being around second hand smoke for four hours is equivalent to a person smoking 16 cigarettes.

I finally quit smoking two years ago, after being a smoker for more than 30 years, however the claim that being secound hand smoke for four hours is the same as smoking 16 cigarettet is impossible, few smokers can smoke 16 cigarettes in 4 hours. However, the stinch of secound hand smoke in a crowded casino ( Saturday Night ) has forced me to leave, I would love to see more non-smoking tables.

 

[Brutus]

I am annoyed by the smoke at the casino.

I cant stand it either.

welcome back Hamburgler

 

[Automatic Monkey]

The health detriments are probably exaggerated

I know we've been hearing about the dangers of "second-hand smoke" for a while now, but there are conflicting studies of the problem and some now believe that inhaling this smoke might even have an inoculatory effect against lung disease! I don't like the smell of the smoke any more than anyone else here, but I'm not convinced there is any hazard to my health. Unfounded health scares are a dime a dozen.

 

[Renzey]

Smoke

I absolutely detest the smoke in the blackjack pits and it is what limits my play more than anything else. If I stay in most casinos more than 1.5 hours, I begin to feel a scratchy throat, burning eyes, clogging nostrils and an aching head. When I get inside my car, I smell smoke on my clothes. Once I'm home, I feel modestly fatigued/drugged. And when I wake up the next morning, I have phlegm in my throat and a modest hangover. If that's how it makes you feel, it has to be bad for you. I never play at a table where somebody is puffing, and playing at a "No Smoking" table is akin to swimming in a small "No Peeing" section of a big pool. It's a socialogical health menace and I hate to think about the thousands of hours I've absorbed it.

Since virtually all poker rooms have gone non-smoking over the past five or eight years, I spend about twice as many hours per year playing poker as compared to blackjack. By the way, I believe Mohegan Sun's newer Smoke-Free blackjack pit is the most effectively handled non-smoking area I've seen in any casino. It has forced air crosswinds at each entrance which do a great job of keeping the outside air out and the inside air in. Only problem is, it's a relatively low stakes pit with eight deck shoes -- cutting off two. Backcounting is very easy though, but the tables are fairly full.

I don't know if/when we're ever going to wake up and make the casinos non-smoking like most other public places, but I do know this; it's up to the non-smokers to make themselves heard. As long as we acquiesce, nothing will change. But if we continually complain and leave the table every time a smoker lights up, ask to make our table "non-smoking" every time we sit down, and mention that the smoke is "just too much for me" every time we color up to leave, things will begin to change.

Poker underwent an amazing metamorphoses in a short time which started with the no smoking rule in California. From there, it spread like wildfire to every major poker location throughout the country. If someone ignorantly liights up a cigarette in a poker room now, he's immediately berated with an onslaught of objections and told to extinguish it. We all must do our part.

 

[techster]

Dangers overrated?

Second hand smoke might have an "inoculatory effect" against lung cancer? I think I read this in the same study that said transfat prevented heart disease and wearing a seat belt doubls your chance of dying in a car accident.

 

[jimpenn]

Renzey is right...smokers are terrible table guests. Card counting is also legal. What should we do about there presence at the table? Tell the pit boss so they don't take the majority of money off BS players during hot shoe by rasising their bets. The reason we have some rules in blackjack today is because of card counters. 8D shoes, 6/5, poor pen, nme, hit 17, etc. I guess this ok. It's Fred's way or the Highway.

 

[sagefr0g]

i smoke but not when i play at the tables. if i want to have a smoke i excuse myself from the table temporarily. i have no desire to make others miserable.
i do smoke in the general casino area since it is allowed. but at least i try and keep my smoking at a distance from those who may be annoyed.

 

[shadroch]

I just recently stopped smoking,this week will be a month.
I was afraid that the smokers at the table would bother me,but they didn't.
I don't think a resonable person can really argue that second hand smoke is anything but harmful.How harmful is certainly subject to debate.
BTW- I'm not sure this is true or a new urban legend,but the air inside the Wynn is supposed to be cleaner than samples taken in the middle of LV Blvd.

 

[EasyRhino]

I'm not a fan of smoke at all, but currently, I'll suck it up if I have to. The only time I really start angling for a way out is if there's a smoker right next to me, then at the very least I"ll try to switch seats or something.

Here in California you do get the occasional no smoking tables or rooms, but I don't seek them out intentionally.

 

[Automatic Monkey]

I just recently stopped smoking,this week will be a month.
I was afraid that the smokers at the table would bother me,but they didn't.
I don't think a resonable person can really argue that second hand smoke is anything but harmful.How harmful is certainly subject to debate.
BTW- I'm not sure this is true or a new urban legend,but the air inside the Wynn is supposed to be cleaner than samples taken in the middle of LV Blvd.

If I had to bet, I would say that it is harmful to the same degree that anything that raises your stress level is harmful. But a person who smokes and inhales is getting smoke concentrations thousands of times higher than a person sitting in a casino, at a much higher temperature, and it takes decades for even heavy smoking to show permanent health effects. "The poison is in the dose" is a well-known truism of medicine and it does not follow mathematically that there is a serious risk from breathing cigarette smoke in the air.

 

[Renzey]

I read in an article some years ago that there are three levels of contamination to the air from cigarette smoke. To the best of my recollection, I think they were described about like this. The least noxious is the filtered air that the smoker exhales into the atmosphere after it's been drawn thru the cigarette filter, then filtered further by his lungs. The medium level of contamination is that same partially filtered smoke just before it enters the smoker's lungs. The third and deadliest level is that which eminates off the end of a burning cigarette -- and that, everybody gets.

Regarding Wynn Casino, there is a smallish casino close to my home which is so crowded at all hours that going there felt similar to entering a burning bulding. Several complaints were dropped in the suggestion box concerning the matter. So they spent over 1 million dollars on a "space age" filtering system, boasting that a visit to their casino will feel like a day at the beach. It made things only moderately better, but still intolerable for me and many others I know. When you have that many small fires burning indoors, I don't think there's any way to fix it.

 

[QFIT]

Ralph Stricker (Silver Fox) had to quit playing BJ primarily due to the smoke. Even if they stopped all smoking, I think they'd have to completely renovate some casinos to rid them of the smoke. Trump casinos come to mind. There was a quite a brouhaha here in New York when the smoking ban was first proposed. Dire threats of mass restaurant closings, etc. (There are over 18,000 restaurants in the city.) Didn’t happen. It’s three years later and 247 new restaurants opened last year. One of the major opponents to the ban (in the restaurant biz) has since reversed his opinion. Not only did his business not suffer; his dry cleaning bill plummeted

 

[techster]

ask the experts

My last comment to to automatic monkey is, since neither one of us are experts, I would suggest reading what experts have to say. And they are all in agreement: the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Society, the U.S. Center for Disease Control, the Surgeon General, and on and on. I find no one who has studied the issue who does not agree. The Surgeon General says there is NO safe level of exposure to second hand smoke.

 

[Negrocan]

I am so tired of the anti smoking crowd. I do not smoke but I figure if someone wants to smoke I can move away from them if it bothers me. Who the hell am I to dictate what someone chooses to put in the their own body which in my opinion is a soveriegn state. It is like porn on the internet. If you don't want to look at it just move (click) away. If you let them start telling people that they can't do something because they think its bad for them then get ready for the wrath. These same people will eventually tell you that they think gambling is bad for you and make your career obsolete.

 

[adt_33]

Smoking conversations always get people going. What a great read.

These places that ban smoking are doing the right thing. Smoking shouldn't be allowed in public places because of the annoyance. I'm not mentioning the health effects because I have yet to see second-hand smoke studies that weren't slanted heavily. Because of the strong responses from non-smoking voters, there's a great Us vs. Them argument stewing. Although I smoke, I normally side with the anti-smoking crowd. Those who are innocent shouldn't be exposed to the smell of smoke.

However, the ban on smoking is absurd in what I call "risk venues," such as bars, clubs, or casinos. Casinos are places where merely going there could mean your end. This isn't a playground, there aren't any kids around. If you don't want to hang out with the big kids then you should go elsewhere.

 

[jimpenn]

I have to put up with all drunks at my table, but I can't smoke...bullshit!

 

[Automatic Monkey]

My last comment to to automatic monkey is, since neither one of us are experts, I would suggest reading what experts have to say. And they are all in agreement: the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Society, the U.S. Center for Disease Control, the Surgeon General, and on and on. I find no one who has studied the issue who does not agree. The Surgeon General says there is NO safe level of exposure to second hand smoke.

If that's so, then the Surgeon General is not applying science. There are safe levels of exposure to arsenic, cyanides, polonium, and in fact these things are present at some level in nearly everything on earth. Why would the poisons in cigarette smoke be any more dangerous than these? And if they were, why are some people able to inhale them in concentrated form for many years without dying? Such a belief defies logic.

For expert and critical analysis, I recommend the Junk Science site. http://www.junkscience.com

 

[shadroch]

Ralph Stricker (Silver Fox) had to quit playing BJ primarily due to the smoke. Even if they stopped all smoking, I think they'd have to completely renovate some casinos to rid them of the smoke. Trump casinos come to mind. There was a quite a brouhaha here in New York when the smoking ban was first proposed. Dire threats of mass restaurant closings, etc. (There are over 18,000 restaurants in the city.) Didn’t happen. It’s three years later and 247 new restaurants opened last year. One of the major opponents to the ban (in the restaurant biz) has since reversed his opinion. Not only did his business not suffer; his dry cleaning bill plummeted

In a city with 18,000 establishments,247 restraurants opening is nothing.
My family has been in the bar/niteclub business in NYC since my Grandfather and his brother opened a saloon in the days after prohibition. The no smoking law has hurt the businesses badly. Not as bad as many predicted but business is not back at pre-2002 numbers yet. My familys club is getting by only because of raised admission fees. We average less people per night and they drink less.