Connecticut casinos ban smoking from poker rooms

Monday, May 1, 2000 | 3:42 a.m.

"It was almost as good as New Year's Eve," Kathy Raymond, director of poker operations at Foxwoods, said of the April 16 policy change. "People were clapping. When they picked up the ashtrays, you could literally see the smoke lifting, clearing.

"For the first time, you could see clearly from one end of the poker room to the other."

Both Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casino in Montville now ban smoking in their poker rooms. And the casinos say the decision was easy: Poker players requested - and many since have enjoyed - the smoke-free parlors.

"Basically, there was a significant demand from poker customers," said Mitchell Etess, the executive vice president of marketing at Mohegan Sun.

Initially, Mohegan Sun was forced to restrict smoking at the poker tables on a temporary basis because of nearby construction, but the reprieve brought requests from card players to ban tobacco at the tables outright.

The ban on tobacco is effective only in the poker rooms at the two casinos, although both establishments have other smoke-free gaming areas.

Because the poker rooms are physically separated from other gaming tables and slot machines, it was more difficult to segregate smokers from nonsmokers.

Card clubs in California are smoke-free by state law, and in Atlantic City the poker room at the Taj Mahal banned smoking a few months ago.

"I'm thrilled to hear that. That's a very positive step in the fight against cancer and the fight for tobacco control," said Andrea Boguski, a Meriden-based spokeswoman for the American Cancer Society. "Across the state of Connecticut, there is a grass roots effort by patrons to get business owners to go smoke-free."