By JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — After Rhode Island banned smoking in virtually all public places, including restaurants and bars, Pawtucket Rep. Elizabeth Dennigan asserts, restaurant revenue actually increased in the next quarter by about 20 percent and has remained at about the same level until the economic downturn hit a couple of months ago.

That, Dennigan says, takes away the rationale for exempting the gambling areas and certain bars at the Twin River and Newport Grand slot parlors, as lawmakers did when they passed the no-smoking bill, fearing a drop-off in revenue at those two facilities that would hurt the state’s share of the take.
She has introduced legislation that would prohibit smoking on the gambling floor of the two sites as well as bars and restaurants inside the buildings.
That bill got a hearing Wednesday before the House Finance Committee along with a proposal by Woonsocket Rep. Lisa Baldelli-Hunt to require that no patron be allowed into the gambling halls who is not at least 21 years of age. Baldelli-Hunt’s bill, introduced in January, also has a provision to require both facilities to be open for gambling 24 hours a day/seven days a week, but the General Assembly has already passed legislation allowing Twin River and Newport Grand to stay open 24 hours on weekends and holidays.
Eight states currently ban smoking completely in casinos, Dennigan told the committee and that figure will be 10 by the end of this year and 24 states limit tobacco use in such facilities. Atlantic City casinos will become smoke-free on Oct. 15, she said. Las Vegas already bans smoking at its casinos, Dennigan said.
Air filters, partitions and segregating smokers into separate rooms, she said, “are inefficient ways to improve air quality.”
Sylvia Weber of the RI State Nurses Association agreed, saying workers from the two sites came to her group concerned about the dangers of second-hand smoke. “Even though the casino has smoke-free areas,” she said, “you have to go through smoke-filled rooms to get to them.”
“There is no gamble,” said Fred Ordonez of Progreso Latino and the RI Tobacco Control Coalition, “we’re not going to lose money. When bars and restaurants go smoke-free, revenue goes up. There is no reason now not to make casinos go smoke-free. The evidence shows there will be more money made.”
Ordonez said the New Jersey Tobacco Control Coalition came to Rhode Island to study air quality and demonstrated that the procedures in place here are not adequate to keep the air healthy.
“We are being used as an example of what not to do,” he told the panel. Dennigan said she is working with legislative leaders, showing them the statistics about increased bar and restaurant revenue as well as surveys of current customers and employees of the gambling halls that she said show 80 percent would like to see the facilities go smoke-free. She is optimistic that her bill can pass to ban smoking either upon passage, as the legislation now calls for, or perhaps a few months down the road as a compromise.
Gamblers between 18- and 20-years-old represent only 3 percent of the revenue coming in to Twin River and Newport Grand, Baldelli-Hunt said.
“If they are not generating much revenue, why have them in there and expose them to gambling and perhaps drinking,” she told The Times after the hearing. “We should protect our youth...from an addiction.”
At the same time, she said, “If we are going to have facilities such as this in our state, we should embrace them and allow them to open in a way that makes them successful and makes the state successful,” such as permitting 24/7 operations.
“This to me is a win-win situation,” Baldelli-Hunt said.
But that is as far as the winning goes. Asked if she thought her bill would win passage in this session of the General Assembly, Baldelli-Hunt admitted, “No, I don’t, unfortunately.”
The committee voted to hold both bills for further study.
Rep. Kenneth Carter of North Kingstown told Baldelli-Hunt that “we have young people dying every day in Iraq and Afghanistan. If they are old enough to bleed and die to protect us,” he asked, why shouldn’t they be allowed to gamble.
Baldelli-Hunt said she doesn’t agree with 18-year-olds going into the service, either, but pointed out that they are not permitted to drink alcohol
No lobbyists or other representatives of Twin River and Newport Grand showed up to testify on either bill. Pawtucket Rep. William San Bento, a member of the Joint Committee on the state lottery and author of the bill that allows Twin River and Newport
Grand to open 24 hours on weekends and holidays (although Newport Grand has declined to do so) opposed extending the smoking ban to the gambling parlors.
“We are in competition with Connecticut,” where the Foxwoods and Mohegan
Sun casinos operate,” he said. “If Connecticut had no smoking, I would say it’s time for us to do it. But people will go to Connecticut because they want to smoke.
“I understand the problem with smoke and second-hand smoke.” San Bento said after the hearing, “but I am looking to raise revenue, not to lose it.”