You can still smoke inside these Kansas City-area businesses — and all the casinos | Opinion
Walk into a bar and grill in Platte Woods — a 230-acre town straddling Interstate 29 just south of Barry Road — and you’ll smell it in the air right away: Businesses here don’t have to provide a smoke-free environment. That’s no knock on any joint here that allows customers to light up. It has the legal right.
Kansas City, thankfully, has a public indoor smoking ban — but the measure doesn’t go far enough to protect hospitality workers. In the region’s largest city, casinos are exempt.
Under Missouri’s Clean Indoor Air Act, a workplace free of smoke should be the norm. Sadly, from small towns in Platte and Clay counties to Raytown and Blue Springs in Jackson County, that’s not so throughout the metropolitan area. (In Raytown, business owners can even allow marijuana-smoking customers to blaze up, now that recreational cannabis is legal in the state.)
But there is hope. North of the river, Liberty, Kearney, Excelsior Springs and North Kansas City have long outlawed indoor public smoking, as have Independence, Lee’s Summit and other suburbs.
Platte Woods Mayor John Smedley says the potential loss of sales tax dollars a ban might bring is a real concern. With a population of fewer than 400, any loss of revenue could hurt, he told us. He supports leaving the decision to business owners.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, public health advocates say. Patchwork smoking laws do more harm than good, they contend.
And casinos? Forget about it. On a daily basis, visitors place bets amid smoke-filled sections at Harrah’s, Bally’s, Ameristar, 7th Street and Hollywood casinos. And of course smoke doesn’t stay out of the non-smoking side.
The people affected the most, studies say? If you guessed workers — with more than 27,000 jobs supported at the 13 casinos in Missouri and 11 in Kansas, according to the American Gaming Association — you would be correct. They’re put at risk by exposure to secondhand smoke, which can cause myriad respiratory ailments for both adults and children, studies have shown.
Through no fault of their own, nonsmokers — including children and the elderly — are at risk. Shouldn’t that account for something? Hospitality workers must be fully protected from smoke in the workplace, advocates contend. We can’t disagree. No one is immune from dangerous toxins and carcinogens in cigarette smoke.
In Missouri, public smoking bans are on the books in more than 30 municipalities, according to the 501(c)(3) nonprofit American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation. But no statewide provision exists. This confused system compromises the health of hospitality workers everywhere.
Among adults, the likelihood of heart disease, stroke or lung cancer increases when subjected to secondhand smoke, according to the American Cancer Society. Children are more susceptible to respiratory disease, ear infections, sudden infant death syndrome, severe asthma attacks and slowed lung growth. Each year, 11,000 people in Missouri die from tobacco-related illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Why are we broaching the subject now? Because more than a decade since the movement to ban smoking in public places began, casinos remain exempt.
Could that change in the near future? Perhaps. In Missouri, the St. Louis County Council is considering a smoke-free casino policy, a measure we hope gains enough public support to become a reality.
Of course, well-financed lobbyists tied to the tobacco and gaming industries are opposed to a casino smoking ban. Why wouldn’t they be? On the table are potential lost profits, they believe.
But there are more than 1,000 nonsmoking casinos in the United States, including all those in Missouri’s neighbor Illinois. Giving tobacco the boot hasn’t put the gaming industry out of business in those places. There’s reason to believe customers who currently stay off gambling floors because of the stale, sickly atmosphere might be willing to return and place their bets if they could breathe freely.
In the interest of public health, municipalities in the Kansas City area and throughout both states should clear the air. It’s time for businesses to put public health first and ban smoking inside once and for all.
