State legislators addicted to easy money long ago rolled over for casino operators who claimed that they couldn’t make money, and provide the state government’s vigorish, without accommodating gamblers who are addicted to tobacco.

So legislators carved out an exception for casinos to public health law that proscribes smoking indoors just about everywhere else. Doing so also exposed untold numbers of nonsmokers, especially thousands of casino workers, to toxic secondhand smoke.

Now, a new casino-industry study on smoking should be the final coffin nail for the state’s benighted policy.

The report by Las Vegas-based casino consultant C3 Gaming found that banning smoking in casinos has a negligible effect on gambling revenue: “Data from multiple jurisdictions clearly indicates that banning smoking no longer causes a dramatic drop in gaming revenue. In fact, nonsmoking properties appear to be performing better than their counterparts that continue to allow smoking.”

Exposure of the smoking-is-revenue myth might be one of the few positive results of the COVID-19 pandemic. Along with a host of other changes that casinos had to make to reopen amid the pandemic, state regulators temporarily banned smoking to ensure that patrons remained masked. Gambling houses not only did not lose money, but found that nonsmoking gamblers and especially, employees, appreciated the change.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “there is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke, and even brief exposure can cause immediate harm.” It reported that 41,000 Americans still die each year from causes related to second-hand-smoke exposure, costing the economy $5.6 billion a year in lost productivity.

In 2022, according to the CDC, about 12.5% of Americans old enough to gamble in casinos also smoke. The new study demonstrates that most of that minority who gamble will continue to do so regardless of whether they are allowed to smoke at the casino. Legislators always were wrong for gambling with people’s health for the sake of gambling revenue. They should seize the chance to make amends by ending the exemption.

— The Citizens’ Voice, Wilkes-Barre, via TNS