Johnson: Casino exemption was never a gamble

March 17, 2006

You simply have to have money, and not just a little bit of it, to truly make it in this world.

It opens doors - blows them, in fact, off the hinges - and, as the events of Thursday at the state Capitol attest, gets you around inconvenient laws that would wickedly maim your ability to make even more money.

I still cannot fully comprehend what I witnessed on Thursday in the Senate. It really has nothing to do with whether you and I should be allowed to smoke in public places.

If I'm ranting here, it is only because I need someone to explain how you can adopt a statewide public smoking ban when you can still smoke in public.

According to the Colorado Senate, which in a whiplash-inducing reversal voted 19 to 15 to ban most public smoking in the state, I can smoke when I gamble, but only in a casino.

Yet, dear reader, if I light up inside my beloved bingo hall or as I am undoubtedly losing money on the dogs or the ponies, the state will give me a ticket and dun me for even more money.

Neither will I be able to light up at my local bar or with my boys down at the VFW local in Golden - folks you figure have fully bought and paid for their right to have a shot, a beer and a smoke. But I can fire one up if I can afford the expensive martinis and stogies at the four "cigar bars" in the state that also have been exempted and given by default a golden- goose monopoly on public smoking.

Add it up.

The public ban on smoking in Colorado has little, if anything, to do with public health and clean air, not the way senators prattled on about it on Thursday.

No, just look at who is getting a pass. It's all about money, baby. Don't take it simply from me.

"Big money lobbyists won. That's the headline!" Sen. Lois Tochtrop, an Adams County Democrat fumed on the Senate floor, minutes after the vote was taken. "Am I p - - - ed? You bet I am."

Lois Tochtrop also backed a proposal in late February to exempt from the measure small tavern owners who do less than 25 percent in gross food sales.

The Senate back then amended the measure, House Bill 1175, to exempt not only taverns, but racetracks, bingo parlors and private clubs. On Thursday, it voted to subject those establishments to nonsmoking, leaving only the casinos, cigar bars, the smoking lounges at the airport and retail tobacco shops exempted.

The measure is identical to the one sent over by the House on Feb. 13. It likely will be ratified in a House vote today and sent to the governor, who is expected to sign it.

"People rolled over today," Lois Tochtrop said. "The lobbyists have spoken. We clearly care more about money than our constituents and the businesses they own."

Dan Grossman, a Denver Democrat who sponsored the measure in the Senate, fairly gloated after the vote, claiming victory in the fight to protect workers from unreasonable health risks.

He dismissed straight away a suggestion that he must not care a whit about the health of casino and cigar bar workers.

"I absolutely do care about those guys," he said, "but we had to choose between this bill or nothing." It came down to, he said, covering them or the thousands of workers who will be covered.

Sorry, blackjack dealers.

Chuck Ford, a spokesman for the Colorado Licensed Beverage Association, which represents the state's bar and tavern owners, said he was both shocked and disgusted.

"Our people will go out of business in droves," he said. "We cater to smokers. It's what we do. And we have never gone out on the streets and dragged in nonsmokers."

Seventy percent of his membership, Chuck Ford estimates, will go under as a result of the proposed smoking ban. Cajoling does not move him off his estimate.

"We operate on such tight margins; we can't afford to lose 10 or 15 percent of our business," he said. "They say we will, instead, get all of these new nonsmokers, but that is just horse hockey.

"It is just bad public policy. It violates every tenet of the Constitution. And I hate using that because every legislator does the same thing, wraps himself in the flag, goes to the mike on the floor, and argues for taking away my members' right to run their business as they see fit."

He said he knew it was only a matter of time before such a bill would be passed, and he always knew the casinos would be exempted.

"They give the state some $100 million a year and half of that goes into the general fund. The rest goes to highways, historic preservation and the like. The money being used to fix the Capitol right now comes from the casinos.

"You tell me whose interests are being served here."

He drives to his native Pueblo, which a few years ago adopted a smoking ban, and remembers the bars that used to operate there, bars that now sit abandoned.

"They talk of free markets," Chuck Ford laments, "of letting the economy dictate, but it's all horse hockey. Tell me, what is the point of destroying people's lives, their livelihoods?"

Just maybe, he hopes, the bulk of his membership can survive.

Then, too, maybe they can find a job up the hill, busing tables at a casino.

Bill Johnson's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Call him at 303-892-2763 or e-mail at johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com.