For smoke-free casinos
Published 4:26 pm Tuesday, August 13, 2013
The problem with sanctimony is the impulse to just say no. Prohibition gave rise to speakeasies and organized crime. Preaching parents raise prodigal kids.
Smoking tracks an all-American story arc — a crop co-opted from indigenous people, cultivated and exported by soon-to-be-wealthy Anglo-Americans, celebrated as an expression of female and middle class liberation and, then, blunted by publication of a pesky 1964 Surgeon General’s report. Tobacco, it seems, kills you.
Government had a tough time reconciling the health danger with a cash crop, simultaneously subsidizing tobacco farmers while warning against the product they grew. In the 1990s, a groundswell of anti-smoking activists and labor groups organized for smoke-free restaurants, culminating in 2005 with passage of I-901, Washington’s public indoor smoking ban. It’s sanctimonious, yes, but second-hand smoke kills nonsmokers. That’s the critical feature — the point where personal liberty collides with public health. Workers get hurt, employees who are not there for fun, but who log the longest hours on site and have more week-in, week-out exposure.
Last week, a University of California, San Francisco, study published in the journal Circulation documented a 20 percent drop in ambulance calls originating from casinos in a Colorado county after the casinos went smoke-free in 2008.
“This study reminds us of the critical importance that clean indoor air ordinances have on our communities and the need to extend the safety of clean indoor air to workers and patrons in all establishments, including casinos,” reads an accompanying Circulation editorial.
In Washington, smoking is permitted only in tribal casinos. Sovereignty ensures that tobacco use and gambling are determined on a tribe-by-tribe basis. Casinos also provide smoke-free gambling, and most are equipped with air-filter gizmos that suck up ambient smoke. It still harms non-smoking employees. For many, a living wage trumps risk.
The United States has a horrendous record preaching to Indian Country. Be Christian. Go to boarding schools and relinquish your culture and language. For decades, shorthand for the Bureau of Indian Affairs was “boss Indians around.” Casinos are driven largely by smoking non-tribal patrons, and perhaps there’s poetic justice to their smoking themselves to death. But many non-smoking tribal employees pay the price.
Someday, all tribal casinos will go smoke-free. It won’t be thanks to preachy editorial boards; it will be in response to consumer demand and public health. We hope it’s soon.
