Will the Bird bet on a casino floor smoking ban?
The next battleground over smoking in the St. Louis area will be casino gambling floors. Casinos were the major exemption in a St. Louis County vote Tuesday that overwhelming approved a ban on smoking in most public places. The county vote also triggered a provision in a recent St. Louis Board of Aldermen bill that will also ban smoking in most places in the city except casinos.
Both sides of the issue plan to take on casinos. Those in favor of no smoking in casinos are encouraged by the fact that more than 65 percent of voters approved the ban, and think the votes may be there to overturn the exemption. Opponents of the smoking ban argue that it is unconstitutional to exempt casinos, because it creates an unfair advantage that will cost bars and restaurants to lose business to gambling parlors.
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Ron is in charge of the main news sections of the Sunday Post-Dispatch and supervises newsroom production of the daily paper several nights a week. He has worked at newspapers since 1976 as a reporter, copy editor, layout editor, deputy sports editor and news editor. He has been at the Post-Dispatch since 2006. 
a casino ban won’t happen unless there is a state wide ban. It’s likely the casino has greased the palm of enough aldermen to keep them exempt.
Will the tent cities be smoking or non smoking?
Downtown-turning into a tent city was set in place 20-25 years ago by horribly stupid and destructive decisions, not in the last two years.
After the casinos will be the outdoor patios, the streets, then finally, your own home. Once these ban lobbyists find gullible lawmakers, there’s no stopping them. The Pandoras box has been opened.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1M9ENyWXIA
You can’t die from smoke in a public building but it’s O.K. in a casino. Is somebody thinking that someone wanting a night out at a casino is a second class citizen or what?
The casinos owe their exemption to our group, Keep St. Louis Free. Alderman Krewson, Mayor Slay and the rest of the Board of Aldermen did not believe a smoking ban would hurt the casinos. Alderman Krewson was going to include them in her City smoking ban. In fact, her initial draft of a smoking ban did include them. But we got Federal Reserve Bank economists to hurry up their study of the effect of the Illinois smoking ban on the Illinois casinos and got results to both St. Louis City aldermen and the County Councilmen long before its official publication. Immediately thereupon the casinos were exempted by Alderman Krewson. If the casinos had been loyal to us in return, and had helped us with the election, it would have been much, much closer. And the pressure they now find themselves under would not exist.