Gamblers will take the path of less resistance. Going to East St. Louis was something I never enjoyed. It was a place to gamble until better things happened for us gamblers on this side of the river. Believe me, the new casino’s downtown are now drawing from the St. Louis County, St. Charles County crowd. My crown spends more time at the Argosy in Alton because of the cleaner air. You are a little less likely to be mugged in Alton than East St. Louis. Just my thoughts as someone that likes to gamble.

Bob wrote, “Illinois is finally solving the ban problem by raising taxes and fees. Missouri would be smart to include a tax increase along with the ban to cover the losses upfront instead of waiting.”

Bob, the higher taxes would then mean even more cuts that the casinos would have to make to cover both the ban losses and the tax increase. You’d have more jobs lost (maybe even an entire casino loss) and then *everyone’s* taxes would *again* have to go up to cover the costs of increased joblessness.

The Antismokers will point to computer statistics and say “But we’re saving 3 and a half lives of casino workers 27 years from now!” but meanwhile think how many lives of those workers AND their spouses and children will be lost as a result of poorer health-care/nutrition/housing after job loss? *Those* numbers never get counted by antismoking extremists because they’d tell the “wrong” story.

Again, I believe the solution is simple: Any group or politician pushing for a ban should be asked to sign a legal committment to cover the monetary losses resulting from a ban. Either that or at least come up front and clean from the start and say “We want a smoking ban that will cost Missouri taxpayers 500 million dollars over the next two years.”

If there’s enough of a demand by people for smoke-banned casinos do you really think the casino folks are so stupid and oblivious of how to make money that they won’t provide facilities on their own?

Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”