Wednesday, May 26, 1999 | 11:07 a.m.
Nevada's gaming industry is reacting cautiously to a new study that finds smoking bans may not hurt tourism.
But the study does not seem to have changed the consensus industry view that an outright ban on smoking would hurt Nevada's gaming and resort industry.
"To simply ban it outright would be absurd at this point," said Harvey Whittemore, a Reno lobbyist for the Nevada Resort Association and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.
A study to be published in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at three states and six cities that have banned smoking in restaurants. Hotel revenues remained the same in California; Vermont; Boulder, Colo.; and San Francisco. They increased in Utah, Los Angeles, New York City, Mesa and Flagstaff, Ariz., the study found.
The study was conducted by Stanton A. Glantz, a tobacco industry critic and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and Annemarie Charlesworth, also of UC.
Gaming industry officials argue that gambling tourists are much different from non-gambling tourists.
"The resort markets that were studied were uniquely different than the Nevada Resort markets," said Whittemore.
Ralph Berry, a spokesman for Harrah's Entertainment Inc., questioned the study's linkage of a ban on restaurant and bar smoking to hotel revenues.
"That sounds like people are trying to jump to a conclusion based on limited evidence, jumping from one industry to the next," said Berry. "A restaurant is a limited hour to two-hour experience. How you can jump to a conclusion about a whole tourist economy I don't see."
William Thompson, a professor of public administration at UNLV's college of business, said a ban would hurt Nevada's tourism industry.
"A ban on smoking in the table area of casinos would be adverse to our interests," said Thompson. "I think our casinos would lose revenue."
While many gamblers would adjust to a ban, high-rollers would likely gamble elsewhere, Thompson said. He estimated that smoking rate among high-rollers to be about 50 percent.
"We can certainly observe that there are a good number of our clientele that enjoy smoking," said Berry. "We don't think it's right to legislate the customer experience."
But Berry declined to say that a smoking ban would hurt Harrah's business.
"I don't think we can speculate on that," said Berry. "It's not something we've studied in depth."
Whittemore noted that non-smoking casinos have not worked, while non-smoking hotels have worked. When the Silver City hotel-casino went smoke-free, revenues dropped. Silver City lifted its smoking ban in 1994. When McCarran Airport instituted smoke-free slot machine areas, revenues fell by 30 percent.
Most in the gaming industry favor a segregation approach, where separate gaming and non-gaming areas are established, over an outright ban.
Alan Feldman, a spokesman for Mirage Resorts Inc., said about 30 percent of the gaming areas in its casinos are non-smoking. There is no difference in revenue or win between smoking and non-smoking areas, he said.
Berry said Harrah's properties have tried non-smoking areas, but found there was no demand for them anywhere in Nevada except for the company's Laughlin casino.
Glantz said the study was not an attempt to study the dynamics of the hotel or tourism industry in depth.
"This is a paper designed to test the veracity of claims that if these things passed, the tourism industry would be negatively impacted," said Glantz.
Whittemore said the decision to ban or segregate smoking in casinos should be up to individual operators.
The Associated Presscontributed to this report.
"A ban on smoking in the table area of casinos would be adverse to our interests."William ThompsonBUSINESS PROFESSOR
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