With Rhode Island’s 2023 legislative session set to begin in January, a renewed effort to ban smoking in the Ocean State has begun. Representative Teresa A. Tanzi is planning to reintroduce a bill that would eliminate smoking exemptions for two casinos.
These two casinos – Bally’s Twin River Lincoln Casino and Bally’s Tiverton Casino – have exemptions on the smoke-free workplace requirement that is embedded in the Public Health and Workplace Safety Act.
However, many casino workers have taken umbrage to these exemptions. Vanessa Baker, a gaming supervisor at Bally’s Tiverton Casino commented: “I am going to get fired or die because it’s killing me.”
Baker takes 10 medications, uses two inhalers, and now requires a nebulizer to work. She blames these respiratory problems on the cigarette smoke she has inhaled during 30 years working in casinos.
She commented further: “They need to stop poisoning us. It’s their money over our health.”
Tanzi agrees with Baker’s sentiment regarding the exemptions in place at Rhode Island’s Ballys casinos. She said: “I find it appalling that workers at casinos are not given the same protections as any other worker.
“There is no safe level of secondhand tobacco exposure. I’ll just keep working until it is eliminated.”
Pushes to ban smoking at casinos have taken place across the US over the last few years, with Massachusetts and New York banning the practice. Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods casinos are now smoke-free following similar worker-led initiatives. There is also a large-scale campaign in Atlantic City, New Jersey to make casinos smoke-free.
However, there is opposition to Tanzi’s bill among Rhode Island legislators. Senate President Dominick J. Ruggerio opposes her bill saying that the issue ‘had already been resolved’ at Twin River.
Furthermore, he said that people who work at the two Rhode Island casinos took those jobs knowing that smoking was allowed in parts of those facilities.
He commented: “If you get rid of smoking over there, you will lose half the customers, without a doubt.”
