The instant Tammy Brady felt the lump in her breast in February 2022, she knew it was cancer. With no known genetic predisposition for breast cancer, she suspects 38 years of working in smoky Atlantic City casinos played a role.
“I was just trying to make a living,” said Brady, 56, a dealer and supervisor at Borgata in that New Jersey resort city. “You don’t think, you know, that you’re going to get sick at your job.”
Some casinos continue to allow indoor smoking even as the share of Americans who smoke fell from about 21% in 2005 to 12% in 2021 and smoking is banned in at least some public spaces in 35 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. Still, 13 of the 22 states and territories that allow casino gambling permit smoking in at least part of their facilities.
Brady is among the casino employees, anti-smoking advocates, and public health experts who argue it is long past time to snuff out casino exemptions from smoking bans, given the dangers of secondhand smoke. But they’ve faced stiff pushback from some gambling industry leaders, including in Missouri, Louisiana, Kentucky, and New Jersey, who argue that smoking bans drive gamblers away — especially in places where patrons can go instead to a casino in a nearby jurisdiction that allows them to light up.
I’m not big on the banning anything, but one’s rights end when another person’s rights begin. If tobacco is hurting non-smoking employees, it’s gotta go.
I kinda like when casinos are still smokey. It’s like a step back in time. They’ve all gone non-smoking around here though, and it took a little bit of the magic with it.
Thats what I was coming to say. I know it’s an unpopular opinion, and I’m not even a smoker, but I LOVED living in Las Vegas and stepping into the older casinos that still smelled like cigarette smoke.
It just made everything feel grittier, and like it truly was “Sin City” as opposed to the “Family Friendly Getaway” that the city has been trying to become.
They’re non smoking here too, except the high roller rooms. Different rules for the rich.
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This is the idiocy of prohibition in a nutshell.
A 56 year old turns up with breast cancer. No, it can’t possibly be the hundreds if not thousands of things everyone is exposed to (fossil fuel emissions, PFAS, gasses released by manufacturing of electronics, ingestion of microplastics, etc., you know… things that actually cause cancer), it’s those damn smokers! For 38 years, I have never been exposed to something else that causes cancer, its those damn cigarettes!
Fuck, a poor fitting bra is more apt to cause breast cancer than second hand smoke.
Stop power-tripping on smokers. Stop trying to control others. Prohibition doesn’t work. The logic it is based on is hopelessly flawed.
If you want a smoke free casino, open a smoke free casino. If you don’t want to work in a smoky environment, don’t work in a casino.
Stop stripping others of their freedom.
The science disagrees with you:
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/secondhand-smoke/health.html
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/secondhand-smoke/policy.html
You don’t have the freedom to hurt others, period. If you must smoke, do it in a place where others are not subjected to it. It’s not hard.
I don’t have the freedom to play music loud enough to damage your hearing in the casino. I don’t have the freedom to shine UV-B lighting at you in the casino. I don’t have the freedom to release poisonous gases at you in the casino. All of these things hurt the people around, so we don’t give people the freedom to do them.
Everyone should have access to a safe work environment, especially hospitality workers. Their jobs are already hard, why do you want them to also get hurt?
The CDC advances data reviews incentivized by War on Drugs dollars. They are hopelessly corrupted on the topic of tobacco.
Causation has never been demonstrated, only correlation, correlation that always comes from cherry picked populations.
Nearly 100 years of science completely agrees with me. But prohibitionists don’t care about reputable science. They care about protecting their propaganda soaked circlejerk.
Grandma got old, got cancer, and died. When asked “why did she get cancer” instead of being honest and saying “there is no way to tell. Unfortunately that is just what happens when you get old. You get cancer and die” doctors ate up the dishonest and easy answer of “it was the cigarettes, so take that as a lesson kiddos, don’t smoke!” And like the misinformed emotional dolts they were, those kids went on to restrict the freedoms of their peers.
You want to get all self righteous? Lobby for the dismantling internal combustion car manufacturers. Lobby for the dismantling of DuPont. Lobby for the dismantling of Monsanto. Lobby to ban use of plastics. These things actually expose everyone on Earth to things that actually have proven causation to cause cancer that doesn’t conveniently require 30 years of brewing for the cancer to happen.
Again, you want a non-smoking casino? Go to a non-smoking casino? Are there no non-smoking casinos? Start your own and/or fuck off.
Simply put, grow the fuck up.
Ok, you don’t trust the CDC because of the USA’s war on drugs policies/funding. Fair enough. Here’s information from only non-USA health organizations:
https://www.who.int/activities/protecting-people-from-tobacco-smoke
https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/environmental-burden-of-cancer/second-hand-smoke
https://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/doi/10.46234/ccdcw2022.020
https://www.health.gov.au/topics/smoking-vaping-and-tobacco/about-smoking/passive-smoking
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/quit-smoking/passive-smoking-protect-your-family-and-friends/
Should I find more, or is World Health Organization, EU and the governments of China, Australia, Canada, and the UK enough? All of these organizations agree that second hand smoke is harmful.
I’m not being self-righteous, I’m saying you don’t have the right to hurt other people. I understand that your argument is that second hand smoke doesn’t hurt other people, so I assume you would agree that you don’t have the right to hurt other people (but maybe you wouldn’t agree, idk). Now we’re just determining who’s right, you and the tobacco industry, or every science-based health administration and organization in the world and the general consensus of the medical community.
If you ultimately do agree that second hand smoke is harmful to others, you’ll have to decide if you want to update your belief that these laws shouldn’t be passed and maybe start smoking further away from people, or if you want to change your morality to say you have the right to hurt other people.
You can also do nothing, ignore all of the evidence I’ve presented to you, and just try not to suffer from too much cognitive dissonance.
Here’s information from only non-USA health organizations
Oh, you mean all the countries that America at at least one point or another subsidized?
The ones that have been fighting for America’s teat since WWII?
No, surely you mean the ones who supposedly champion freedom above all else…
Oh, none of those?
Gotcha.
Jfc. You’re a lot better at moving goalposts than showing anything reputable that contradicts decades of research by countless independent groups. Take some of your own advice: grow the fuck up. Have some respect for people other than yourself.
One of your sources is CHINA which is openly antagonistic with the US about every opportunity they can get and their response is hurr durr those are all countries sucking up to the US.
Meanwhile I don’t see him backing up any of his shit with sources.
Save yourself some time. They’re just a shit troll.
What a stupid take, talking about freedom to smoke in a casino. You’re free to smoke outside and stfu.
Nobody is being forced to go to a casino, though. If the casino wants to allow smoking, let them. If you don’t want to breathe smoke, don’t go.
You are no longer allowed to drink coffee indoors.
If you want to disperse the horrible cancer causing carcinogen, caffeine, into the air, do it outside.
Stfu you soft brained imbecile.
Lol sorry but this response is so dumb it hurts.
Says the propaganda guzzler.
Which is more stupid?
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A casino owner who smokes, drinks, and gambles, so they create a successful business offering a place where other grown ass adults can smoke, drink and gamble.
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A fucking Karen who gets breast cancer, so she demands that noone on Earth can enjoy a smoke under a roof. Probably really just gunning for a lawsuit, a horse shit lawsuit, against her employer of 36 years.
I mean you make a pretty decent argument on your first post.
There may be a link to her working in the casino for 38 years and getting breast cancer… but you’re right, it’s hardly a proven fact and could have been caused by a thousand other things. And maybe a casino should be able to choose whether they are smoke free or not. You can make a pretty good argument for that stance.
But man , every one of your responses after that has just been mouth diarrhea.
The caffeine one was just fucking stupid.
Take some time and back up your statements rather than just troll out. Be better.
Silly bitch probably thinks her lungs are in her tits lmao.
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Caffeine isn’t a carcinogen, and it isn’t dispersed into the air in any significant quantity.
Neither is nicotine, which means you may have an argument when it comes to vaping. Tobacco leaves contain significant quantities of several known carcinogens, and combustion produces even more (as does the combustion of many organic materials; you shouldn’t be inhaling wood smoke either).
May I ask what you would consider to be sufficient evidence that tobacco is a carcinogen? That would help everyone either provide the relevant information or acknowledge that it doesn’t exist.
The irony of you calling someone an imbecile after making a completely brain dead comparison is absolutely hilarious. Go whine about how others won’t sacrifice their health for others stupidity elsewhere you single-braincelled toilet bowl.
If it weren’t for regulations every casino, bar, or restaurant would be a smoke filled hell hold all so less than 15% of people can actively work on destroying their health. Just because a minority of idiots want to smoke doesn’t mean every where I go should be filthy and avoided.
Leave your disgusting habit in your house and car so the rest of us can enjoy the air we breath.
Then don’t work at a casino
Why not ban smoking instead? No let’s let a minority of people affect a majority of people.
Stay home and smoke there instead.
This is the thing.
Don’t like drinking and smoking? Don’t work at a bar.
No, surely the answer is the use heavy handed oppressive tactics to prevent smokers from opening businesses that smokers like and can relax in.
People need to work, they don’t always have the option of choosing where that is. It’s why worker health and safety laws exist, workers need to be able to refuse unsafe work because they can’t just “go work somewhere else”
Except the majority of people don’t smoke.
Don’t like going to a smokeless bar or casino? Stay home instead.
I’d feel differently if the majority of people going to these places smoked, but they don’t.
You are the minority. Deal with it.
You are a brave person for saying all of this on this website. I know you definitely knew what the response would be, and I applaud you. Huzzah!
It ain’t fucking freedom to harm others bitch
Your rights and freedoms end where they start to impact another person, smoking indoors is proven to give staff exposed to it the same problems as if they smoked it all themselves.
