Why Is Ameristar Exempt From Proposed Smoking Ban? | DiscountCigarettesBox.com Tobacco News

Why Is Ameristar Exempt From Proposed Smoking Ban?

If you're going to ban smoking cigarettes at corner taverns and mom-and-pop restaurants, why not ban it on the gaming floor of Ameristar Casino, too?

On Tuesday night business owners asked that question, again and again, of St. Charles County Council members.

It seems like a pretty good question to me.

The measure approved Tuesday includes an exemption for Ameristar's casino floor — not the bars and restaurants at the casino. Although it passed 4-2, County Executive Steve Ehlmann has next week to decide whether to veto it.

If he doesn't, the proposal will go before voters Nov. 6, 2012.

The main reason for the exemption, says Councilman Joe Cronin, the sponsor, is that Ameristar has a competitor, Harrah's, only a few miles away in St. Louis County, where casinos are exempt from that county's smoking cigarettes ban.

If smoking cigarettes were banned at Ameristar, Cronin says, many customers would simply drive to Harrah's, endangering the jobs of some of Ameristar's 1,600 employees.

The concern over jobs is so great, Cronin says, that the bill's three other yes votes would have been no without the exemption.

Cronin calls his bill a compromise. Ameristar, he says, isn't pleased that smoking cigarettes would be banned at its restaurants and bars, including the Bottleneck Blues Bar. But the casino is glad to have the casino floor exempted, he says.

At the same time, Cronin says, the American Cancer Society, which helped sponsor the successful O'Fallon smoking cigarettes ban in April, is not pleased that the casino is exempted, but glad to have a county-wide ban gain traction.

"I was kind of walking a delicate line," Cronin says. "You can't tick the casino off too much, or they will throw their money against it. And you can't tick off the American Cancer Society, or they will throw their money at it."

What most don't realize, Cronin says, is that if Ehlmann vetoes the bill, the American Cancer Society might gather thousands of signatures — like it did in O'Fallon — and present its own version of a ban to voters in the form of a county charter amendment. That version, Cronin says, would likely have no exemptions.

That certainly is possible, says Stacy Relliford, with the American Cancer Society.

"We would love to see all employees covered," Relliford says. "But we understand Councilman Cronin's position. But it's unfortunate that casinos were exempted."

Some business owners — especially those on Main Street in St. Charles — would be hurt by the double standard of having the ban apply to them and not the casino floor.

Other small business owners, I believe, want Ameristar included in the ban because they know the Las Vegas-based corporation would flex its political muscle and spend perhaps millions to try to defeat the measure.

If not the casino, who else has the financial wherewithal to mount a campaign against the ban? Certainly not owners of small businesses, who already are limping along in a down economy.

Troy Stremming, an Ameristar senior vice president, says if the St. Charles casino would be included in the ban, the company would enter the fray.

"Absolutely, we don't want to be at a competitive disadvantage," Stremming says. "There is no denying, in order to protect the jobs of our employees — when you have hundreds of millions of dollars of investment — we would do whatever we had to do.

And we would get involved in a significant level."

Stremming says that throughout the industry smoking cigarettes-bans typically cause a 20 percent drop in casino revenue.

He doesn't believe in any type of smoking cigarettes ban.

"I agree with all of those small businesses when it comes to the business rights issue," he says. "As long as smoking cigarettes is legal in the United States, then it should be up to the business owner — who has invested his own capital — how to run that business."

I asked Stremming if Ameristar will campaign against the measure, even with the casino-floor exemption?

It's too early to tell, he answered.

Stremming explained how a smoking cigarettes ban hurts casinos.

Gamblers not only have a set amount of funds they are willing to spend, but also have a fixed amount of time to spend at the casino. Repeatedly walking outside to smoke cigarettes cuts into that time.

On top of that, he says, it might be cold outside. And if the person is older or disabled, Stremming says, it might be a long, arduous journey to get outside to smoke.

Once outside, he says, smokers are that much closer to their car and might decide to just drive home rather than walk back to the casino floor.

County Councilman Jerry Daugherty voted against the bill not because he's against a smoking cigarettes ban, he says, but because the bill contains exemptions.

"If you're going to have a ban, it should be a ban — not piecemeal like in St. Louis County," he says.

Daugherty says it's hard for him to sympathize with Ameristar's concern that a smoking cigarettes ban would put the company in a competitive disadvantage with Harrah's.

Ameristar already has a big advantage over other bars and restaurants in St. Charles County, Daugherty says. The casino can sell alcohol to 3 a.m., long after local bars must close.

For casinos, the Missouri Gaming Commission grants liquor licenses, not the local municipality.

Looking to the future, if Ameristar and other Missouri casinos ever get to where they actually break a sweat worrying about smoking cigarettes bans, the debate will shift to Jefferson City, where state lawmakers will be asked to short-circuit local attempts to ban smoking cigarettes in casinos.

Generally, I'm not a betting man. But in this case I'm willing to wager that boatloads of campaign cash will be involved.

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