Fernley is a town off the Interstate 80, east of Reno and the new Fernley Nugget is a modestly-sized casino for Nevada, with 10,000sq.ft, 174 slots and two poker tables, but it was built specifically as a non-smoking establishment.

General manager Scott Tate insists that market research suggested that there was an opening for a non-smoking casino in the area.

He has responsibility for five other casinos in Northern Nevada, which are not non-smoking.

“We are not taking a position to be smoke-free everywhere and for always. But this particular facility, in this particular market, in this particular location, we feel could be successful.

Nevada has an $11bn gambling industry but has so far firmly recognised that smoking goes with gambling.

History shows that Reno had a non-smoking casino in the late 1980s, which closed down for lack of business.

Some casinos in the state set aside areas for non-smoking on the gambling floor but only one other has a total ban in the state, Bill’s Casino Lake Tahoe, which introduced a smoking ban in January 2007, operated by Harrah’s.

Said Marybel Batjer for Harrah’s: “Our position is that we would be very supportive if everyone were to go in this direction, but it is very hard when you are adjacent to another property, a competitor, and they have an offering that you don’t.”

Nevada has a smoking ban in most public places, but held off from applying it to casinos.

• Bellagio designates some gaming areas, including the poker room as non-smoking. They evaluate each pit in the casino and make adjustments day-to-day for nonsmokers.

Smoke-Free Casinos in Las Vegas

• Harrah’s has a 1,000 square foot non-smoking gaming section, which includes reel slots, video poker machines, and blackjack and roulette tables.

• MGM Grand offers nonsmoking gaming tables and a designated nonsmoking slots section in the main casino.

• The Mirage has fresh air pumped into the poker room and contaminated air pulled out of the building. Not only does this help to keep the air clean, but rumor has it that oxygen is pumped in to keep gamblers awake so they will not leave the tables.

Smoke Free Areas

Virtually all showrooms are now smoke-free. Most hotel-casino convention centers are non-smoking.
Indoor pools, family arcades and health spas are also generally smoke-free. Restaurants designate an average of 70% to the nonsmokers.

The Venetian, Harrah’s, MGM Grand, and the Rio All Suite Hotel have 80% or more of their rooms designated as non-smoking rooms and suites.

As a non-smoker myself, I remember the days of the smoke filled casinos and coming out smelling like I had become a cigarette.

Those days are gone, maybe not downtown, but it is not the same Vegas as it once was.
The food, gambling, shopping, spas and beautiful hotels can be enjoyed by all, even those most sensitive to smoke.

Las Vegas casinos are going smoke free; not by legislation but by a glacial encroachment of non-smoking areas square foot by square foot.

We stumbled upon this sign (top right) at Palazzo that said “Palazzo Offers A Smoke Free Corridor” which is sort of a nice way of saying ‘you can’t smoke in the casino unless you’re gambling.’

Vegas Casinos to Go Smoke Free

With smoking banished from restaurants by Nevada state law as well as verboten at many properties except in the casino proper, slowly being extended to the walkways inside the casino (not to mention smoke free tables) the days of the ’smoke em if you got em’ in Vegas are subtly and quietly being snuffed out.

I guess it’s inevitable that smoking in Vegas will be banned as smoking indoors is banned nearly everywhere in the U.S.. No, it won’t happen with a wide proclamation, but instead a slow but steady isolating of areas where smoking is allowed until the last areas literally waft away into the atmosphere.

Atlantic City Tightens Curb on Smoking

ATLANTIC CITY (AP) — ending a battle of more than a year, the City Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to ban smoking on the gambling floor at all 11 Atlantic City casinos, starting on Oct. 15.
In a 9-to-0 vote, the Council did away with the last major loophole to a tough statewide ban on smoking in public buildings that had exempted gambling halls.

The New York Times

But patrons will still be able to light up in smoking lounges away from the gambling tables and slot machines, if the individual casinos choose to build them.
Casino workers — many wearing T-shirts with the slogan, “Nobody deserves to work in an ashtray” — burst into sustained applause when the votes were counted, and chanted: “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”
“The employees of Atlantic City’s casinos have hit a jackpot of their own tonight,” said Dr. Arnold M. Baskies, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society in New Jersey and New York.

“Hard-working casino employees have been keeping Atlantic City’s multibillion-dollar casino industry on a roll, but have been gambling with their lives for far too long,” Dr. Baskies said.
Mayor Scott Evans said he would sign the ordinance within 10 days.
“We’re going to save lives with this,” he said. “People are going to be able to come here and enjoy a nice smoke-free environment.”
More than two dozen states nationwide regulate smoking in casinos, eight ban smoking altogether in the gambling halls, and two others will impose a total ban starting in 2009, according to Karen Blumenfeld, policy director of the New Jersey Group against Smoking Pollution.
In January 2007, Atlantic City tried to pass its own law banning smoking in the casinos, but backed down under pressure from the casino industry, which claimed the measure could cost them 20 percent of their revenue and mean the loss of as many as 3,400 jobs.
The City Council then enacted a compromise law restricting smoking to no more than 25 percent of the casino floor.
But that has not worked. The smoking areas are still not walled off and separated from nonsmoking areas, as last year’s law ordered, and smoke still wafts throughout the casino floor.
Smokers feel persecuted, and casinos fret about losing business in an already bad economic climate, which is being worsened by the growing success of slot machine parlors in nearby Pennsylvania and New York.
Joe Corbo, president of the Casino Association of New Jersey, declined to comment on the vote.
Kim Hesse, a Caesars dealer and opponent of smoking, predicts that when the ban takes effect there will be some drop-off in the number of smokers who come to gamble, but she feels it will be insignificant.