Opinion/Baker: Workers urge smoke-free casinos in RI
Vanessa Anne Baker lives in Portsmouth.
I have worked in New England casinos for 27 years. When I signed up to be a casino table games dealer, I knew I would have to sacrifice weekends and holidays. I never realized I would also be sacrificing my health.
COVID changed everything, but not all for the worse. One positive result was the ban on smoking in casinos. For two years, we had the same benefit most Rhode Islanders take for granted every day: a smoke-free workplace. We breathed easier not having to be surrounded by one to six players smoking under our noses, no longer going home stinking of smoke or waking up with a “hangover” from being bathed in cigarette and cigar smoke every shift.
In the recent weeks since Rhode Island’s casinos returned to allowing smoking, I realized the toll the secondhand smoke has had on me and my coworkers. I was newly diagnosed with COPD and am back to visiting the doctor, getting chest X-rays and a pulmonary test. I am back on medication for respiratory issues clearly caused by exposure to secondhand smoke.
After two years without smoking, our guests were used to smoking outside. It makes no sense that the state would have allowed smoking to return, knowing full well the health impacts it would have on our guests and employees.
I would not be writing this letter if my lungs were never given the opportunity to recover during the pandemic. Nor would I or fellow employees have begged for our health, and frankly our lives, in front of the Rhode Island House Finance Committee on April 13, asking for passage of Rep. Teresa Tanzi’s bill H7855 to include casinos in the state’s ban on workplace smoking.
Casino employees should have the same human rights as every other Rhode Island resident. Smoking is banned in nearly all workplaces, state beaches and state parks. The legislature has had a bill to ban smoking in casinos since before the pandemic and has never brought it to the floor for a vote. When casino employees spoke at the State House, the chairperson stated to those testifying that it is always nice to have heartfelt testimony; so heart (and lung) felt is what we gave. We were expressing to them the maladies we acquired working in a secondhand smoke environment and we were begging them to ban casino smoking.
I love my job, I love the people I work with, and I love my casino customers. We have become family, but I can no longer be the canary in the coal mine.
Everyone knows secondhand smoke causes illness, disease and death. It is time our state, and the casinos, do the right thing and stop poisoning workers and patrons for a negligible profit to the casinos and the state coffers. We need to follow the lead of Massachusetts and most of Connecticut, and end smoking.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Opinion/Baker: Workers urge smoke-free casinos in RI
