It looks like the new clean indoor air act has drawn it's sights in it's first lawsuit. It will take on Bilbo's Bar and Grill. Several other establishments are in line to be taken to court. Actually there is another lawsuit in progress against a cigar shop.

When the Southern Nevada Health district investigates an establishment, they check for 3 things. Conspicuous No Smoking signs at all entrances. No ash trays or smoking paraphenalia. And employees restricted from smoking indoors. Many establishments have already began modifying their shops to have seperate non-smoking areas even though there are not enough rules to know exactly how to do it.

The current law suit is focused on Bilbo's having ash trays. Bilbo's says that these ash trays are allowed because they are advertising tools with their logo and other info on them.

There are a lot of complaints that the law is too vague. It is my guess that this will be a tough battle. The owner of Bilbo's has pretty deep pockets and is willing to go to the supreme court. I don't know where the funding or expertise is coming from on the prosecution side. I know that they want to up the fines from $100 to $500. And I kinda suspect that Bilbo's has their act together pretty well. While I agree that the law is vague and I don't like the law, I don't know if argument over ash trays is the answer.

I have my doubts on whether the clean air people are ready for a lawsuit. The hand written inspection reports on eash establishment are online. It just doesn't seem terribly professional. You can read one specific report on a Burger King where the name of the establishment is handwritten as Bogar King.

I would love to see the law thrown out and allow establishments to set their own rules or at least let the people vote again on with a more descriptive law. The current law was passed under the disguise as a law to keep people from smoking in child care centers.

A.C., because of a new law, has approximately 1/4 of the casino floors assigned for smoking. It is interesting trying to figure out why they chose some areas. Harrah's, as I suspect others have done, have the smoking areas around the bars. People were complaining at the Borgata, specifically the "B" bar that you could not breathe in it when playing vp as everyone else kept coming in to have a smoke thereby making it unbearable.

Yesterday, while at Harrah's, I noticed signs indicating that there is smoking in certain areas but only for machine players-----not just anyone who decides to leave another area to smoke.

When the law was first passed, rumor was that casinos were going to build walls around the smoking areas such as at the McCarran airport. That certainly did not seem like a good idea. Some saw it a waste of money just in case the future holds "no smoking" anywhere in a casino. Can't ever see that happening.

Must admit it was nice playing favorite vp machines yesterday not worrying about choking with cigarette or cigar smoke. Even saw a casino employee tell an individual to leave an area or stop smoking. I understand some of the security and management in certain casinos just ignore the fact that people are walking around freely while smoking.

Heard this morning that the House of Blues at Showboat started non-smoking as of May 1. This was an area with a bar, as well as some of the better paying high roller vp machines. Guess it was losing money for the casino. Some think it is because the high rollers complained about the smoking where they wished to play.

I find it interesting to see this whole picture evolve as each casino tries to figure out the best way to follow the law.

Beth

The casinos here are exempt as they have special influence. All they had to do was designate the non casino areas such as restaurants as no smoking. The strip clubs are controlled by a special influence and they are exempt. Many pub and grubs are building walls to isolate the smoking area. The airport is no smoking inside the buildings.

Here in Minnesota we have a bill to prohibit all smoking inside buildings/business where employees work.
I know there was a big lobby by the VFW's, Bars (don't serve food) to exempt them from the ban in that majority of their patrons were smokers and they would be put out of business.
I heard the bill passed but not sure if it banned smoking in the private clubs or not.

I know I read something a while back about some woman in California going after the casino's there to get smoking banned as a workers rights safety issue?

I think they were saying that if her organization succeeded that they probably would go after the Vegas casinos next?

Personally I don't see the casino's winning this fight. I think the writing on the wall for banning all indoor smoking.