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.

  • Melkath@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    32
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    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.