Rhode Island casino workers are starting up their anti-smoking campaign again, and new laws are on the way.

Rhode Island casino workers are starting up their anti-smoking campaign again, and new laws are on the way.

Workers at the two casinos in Rhode Island hope to be a anti-smoking place at work by 2023.

Secondhand Smoke

The only casinos in Rhode Island, Bally’s Twin River Lincoln and Bally’s Tiverton, continue to expose their employees to secondhand smoke. The two commercial casinos in Rhode Island did not have to follow the Public Health and Workplace Safety Act, which was passed in 2004.

Bally’s Twin River and Tiverton can set aside areas of their gaming floors where people can smoke inside. The smoking areas must be “physically separated” from the rest of the floor, which is for people who don’t smoke. They also need their own ventilation systems.

Despite the protection, many casino workers and non-smokers have complained about tobacco smoke in casinos in recent years. State Rep. Teresa Tanzi (D-Narragansett) plans to close the casino smoking loophole again next year.

“It’s unfortunate that casino workers don’t have the same rights as other workers,” Tanzi told The Boston Globe last week.

Tanzi wants to try again to get a bill passed when the Rhode Island General Assembly meets in January 2023.

Grassroots Movement Formed

Tanzi says that she is fighting to change the state’s laws about smoking in casinos on behalf of the workers. The Globe also talked to Vanessa Baker, who works as a gaming floor supervisor at Bally’s Tiverton. She says that working in smoke-filled casinos for 30 years has hurt her health.

Baker says she uses two inhalers and a nebulizer and takes ten medicines every day. She doesn’t smoke, but she says that her workplace is to blame for her breathing problems.

“They have to stop making us sick. “Their money is more important than our health,” Baker said.

Baker is part of a local group of people who work in casinos and want to change the rules about smoking inside casinos. The group just started its own local chapter of “Casino Employees Against Smoking Effects (CEASE),” an organization that was started last year in Atlantic City to stop people from smoking in casinos.

In a statement, CEASE Rhode Island said, “Rhode Island needs to stop taking chances with the health of our casino workers.”

“The rest of the hospitality industry in Rhode Island doesn’t allow smoking, and it hasn’t for more than 17 years. It’s not fair to put the casino business ahead of the health concerns of the hardworking workers, who have been ignored for too long, said the release’s last sentence.

A top Democrat is against the plan.

Tanzi must overcome a major hurdle to amend Providence’s casino smoking laws. Senate President Dominick Ruggerio, the Assembly’s most prominent Democrat, supports smoking in Bally’s casinos.

Tanzi’s bill is unnecessary because Bally’s Lincoln guaranteed last year that its expansion’s first floor will be smoke-free.

Ruggerio did agree, though, that the ventilation system needed to be improved.

I have been to that place many times. The smoke does nothing. “That’s going to be fixed,” Ruggerio said.

Concerning Tanzi’s attempts to change the law, the Democrat said, “I’m against that bill because that problem was already solved at Twin River. If you don’t let people smoke, you will lose at least half of your customers.”