Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | November 2012 36 In Focus in areas of gaming tables. They want the dispatch to stipulate that at most half of a casino’s gaming tables can be included within its smoking area. According to Health Bureau legal advisor Rui Amaral, “the number of gaming tables in smoking areas will be taken into account while reviewing the requests.” Casino operators who fail to comply with the government dispatch and guidelines may have their smoking areas reduced or even taken away. The government’s policy aim is for casinos to be entirely smoke-free in the long run. The government will assess the current regulations’ effectiveness in three years’ time in order to determine whether the law needs to be amended, which could happen after 2015. Fiery Issue The issue of smoking bans in casinos has generated fierce debate in various major gaming jurisdictions, and the pro-smoking lobby has generally prevailed. In Nevada, casino floors remain one of the few indoor This despite the much lower prevalence of smoking among casino visitors in the US than in Macau. About 20% of adults in the US smoke, compared to 50% in mainland China—the source of 57% of Macau’s 28 million visitor arrivals last year. Even rules-obsessed Singapore exempted the casino areas—though not the other public areas—at its two integrated resorts from the city-state’s wide-ranging indoor smoking ban, while requiring the IRs to implement their own internal policies regarding smoke-free zones. Singapore’s decision not to include the issue in national legislation is perhaps motivated by an appreciation of the difficulty of delineating smoking and non-smoking areas within an expansive main-gaming floor, as well as the understanding that a large proportion of gamblers in Asia like to smoke. Given the passion for gambling among Chinese players, however,thesmartmoneysaysthenewcasino smoking regulations in Macau are unlikely to have a significant impact on revenue. And in any case, smokers who gamble will continue to have access to plenty of areas where they can do both in Macau. Hooked—the majority of adult males in China are smokers public venues where smoking is allowed. In 2008, Atlantic City in New Jersey—a state where smoking in other public areas is also largely banned—scrapped plans to impose a partial smoking ban in its casinos in the wake of the fallout from the financial crisis. Even rules-obsessed Singapore exempted the casino areas— though not the other public areas—at its two integrated resorts from the city-state’s wide-ranging indoor smoking ban.