Five years ago the voters of South Dakota adopted a smoking ban that included casinos. Proponents claimed it would improve public health. Critics claimed it would irretrievably harm business.
Both sides are making the same claims today.
About one fifth of the state’s adults continue to smoke, with minors smoking an estimated 16.5 percent. That’s down several points from 2011 when the ban was adopted.
According to a South Dakota American Cancer Society spokesman, quoted by the Rapid City Journal, “We’re seeing declining rates of individuals smoking, a decrease in youth using cigarettes, a decrease in the use of chewing tobacco, and those numbers are a reflection of fewer individuals having to deal with an unhealthy smoking environment. We’ve made it easier for people to quit.”
Polls show that about 85 percent of residents approve of the ban. But there are those who say that the law has been bad for business. They point to a growing gaming industry in Deadwood, South Dakota’s gaming city and rising receipts from video lottery before the ban.
When it took effect, along with the hits that resulted from the Great Recession, business went into a long dive.
Deadwood Mayor Chuck Turbiville, who is also chairman of the South Dakota Video Lottery Commission, told the Journal, “Yes, I think the smoking ban was the major factor in the reduction of gross revenues for South Dakota’s video lottery.” He added, “We noticed it in Deadwood, and it certainly was evident from the video lottery establishments across the state.”
In 2010 video lottery income was $215 million. In 2011, the first year the law took effect, revenues were $191 million, eventually reaching $176 million by 2012. The following year revenues started to recover. Last year they were $185 million.
Similar trends occurred in Deadwood’s casinos. According to Tom Rensch, managing partner of the Silverado/Franklin Historic Gaming Complex, quoted by the Journal, “I don’t think Deadwood has ever recovered from the smoking ban. We’ve never gotten to that level of gaming again.”
Many casinos cut hours and staff.
Since smokers make up a larger percentage of the gambling population than they do of the general public, discouraging them from playing hits the bottom line, says Rensch. During the first year of the ban, Deadwood casinos suffered worse than in any year since gambling was legalized in 1989. Revenues went from a high of $106.2 million in 2010 r\to $100 million in 2011, to $107 million in 2012 and $103 million in 2013. Last year’s revenues were $104 million.
Mike Trucano, a smoker, resident and businessman in Deadwood argues that individual business owners should be able to decide whether their business allows smoking. “Let the market decide,” he says.
Rensch says that the gaming industry has adapted to the change and so have smokers, who now go outside and smoke and come inside to play.
Louie Laionde credits the law with getting her to quit smoking. She says she may be the only “saloon-keeper in the world who didn’t favor smoking. But I worried about my bartenders and wait staff, who were being subjected to eight hours of constant smoke in their faces for 40 hours a week.”
