After the Smoke Cleared, Where Did All the Bingo Players Go?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/24/us/24bingo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

After the Smoke Cleared, Where Did All the Bingo Players Go?
By STEPHANIE STROM
Banning smoking at charity bingo games may have health benefits, but it is proving harmful to earnings.
In Minnesota, which adopted a statewide ban on smoking in all indoor workplaces in October, revenue from all charity gambling dropped nearly 13 percent in the last quarter of 2007, compared to the same quarter the year before, according to state officials. More than half of the drop — the equivalent of about $100 million annually — was attributed to the new law, they said.
Charlie Lindstrom, who runs the bingo nights at an American Legion post in Fergus Falls, Minn., said some of his former customers now drove to casinos on Indian reservations, where they can puff away, or across the border to Fargo, N.D., where veterans’ organizations are exempt from that state’s smoking ban.
On a good night, Mr. Lindstrom said, bingo at the post used to attract 50 to 75 players. Nowadays it is more like 30 or 40.
“It’s had a profound effect on us here,” Mr. Lindstrom said. “We’ve sponsored several baseball teams here in the past, but we can’t give as much now because the smoking ban has really reduced our revenue.”
Mr. Lindstrom is not alone. Managers of charity bingo games in California, New Jersey, New York and Washington State also say their states’ smoking bans have forced cutbacks in their budgets and in their support for various causes.
Few believe they can cultivate new nonsmoking players. They say smoking goes with bingo like peanut butter with jelly. Michael J. Surwill, bingo chairman at Elks Lodge No. 2501 in Ocean Springs, Miss., estimated that smokers outnumbered nonsmokers three to one at the lodge’s weekly game.
Last year, his bingo game produced $23,000 that supported a shelter for abused women, a drug awareness program and a camp for young cancer survivors, Mr. Surwill said, adding, “I’m sure we wouldn’t raise nearly that much if we banned smoking.”
Veterans’ organizations like the American Legion, fraternal groups like the Shrine and Moose clubs, local drum and bugle corps and churches have long depended on revenue from gambling, though it has been on the decline — and not solely because of smoking. A proliferation of casinos on reservations, changes in state gambling regulations and, now, a faltering economy have all played a role.
Some advocates of smoking bans said the costs of smoking to the state in terms of public health and productivity greatly outweighed the losses to charity. And some argue that the revenues will return in over the long run.
“Around the country,” said State Representative Thomas Huntley, Democrat of Duluth and a chief sponsor of Minnesota’s Freedom to Breathe Act, “whenever places have put in smoking bans, there is a six-month period where there is a drop in business in bars and restaurants, which is where this gambling takes place, and after that, it starts to rebound.”
But bingo managers in states where bans on smoking have been in effect longer say nonsmokers cannot make up for the decline in revenues from smokers. Instead, they say, their industry has undergone a wave of forced consolidation.
“We actually benefited from it, but for the wrong reason — my competition was forced to close,” said Clyde Bock, bingo manager for the Ruth Dykeman Children’s Center in Seattle.
When Washington’s ban on smoking took effect in 2005, Mr. Bock was able to partially enclose a porch where bingo players could still smoke, and he got it approved as a separate facility. “It cost me $8,000, but it protected my customer base,” he said. “Other games weren’t so lucky.”
Still, revenues are down. In 2006, the bingo operation at the children’s center, which then belonged to Big Brothers Big Sisters, generated about $325,000 a year, after expenses, and employed 17 people. A year later, under the auspices of the center, it produced $150,000 and employed 13 people.
“People underestimate the impact smoking bans will have,” Mr. Bock said.
Washington used to be home to 100 bingo halls that raised money for charity. Now there are fewer than 20.
Bret Rios, director of operations for the Blue Devils, a nonprofit drum and bugle corps in Concord, Calif., says his organization, too, has felt the effects. “A lot of people who play bingo like to smoke,” Mr. Rios said
Bingo is the largest source of revenue for the Blue Devils, which operates musical groups that involve more than 500 children each year. In 2005, bingo provided $1.2 million for the organization’ s activities, covering more than half its costs.
Mr. Rios said bingo revenues were down about $10,000 a month since Contra Costa County imposed more stringent restrictions on smoking in 2006. Attendance at the nightly games has fallen to about 225 on average, compared to 300 or more before the ban took effect.
The Blue Devils had spent roughly $70,000 to create a specially ventilated separate room for smoking bingo players, which the county ordered closed under its new regulations. The organization replaced it with a covered patio in its parking lot, but smokers are not happy with it, Mr. Rios said.
“You’ve got to get up and down, up and down, to go out and smoke,” said Judy Aiello, 53, who has played bingo at the Blue Devils parlor for about 20 years.
Ms. Aiello said friends who used to play at the Concord center now went to American Indian-owned casinos or bingo parlors in the adjacent county, which has less stringent smoking restrictions than Contra Costa.
Ms. Aiello and other smokers also spoke of tensions between smokers and nonsmokers. Some nonsmoking bingo players have complained that the smell of smoke wafts in from outside, and the Blue Devils group was recently forced to place notices at entrances, reminding smokers that the county forbid them to light up within 20 yards of doorways.
“Why do all the nonsmokers have all the rights and the smokers have none?” said Rhonda Convino, 37, who smokes but has remained loyal to the Blue Devils games.
Mr. Rios said he felt caught between a rock and a hard place.
“I’m not a smoker, and I’m not fond of smoking,” he said. “I wouldn’t go to a place that smelled of smoke and spend a lot of time there. But they’ve gone way too far — you know, they’re even thinking about passing a law that would make it illegal to smoke in your own home.”
Told about that idea, Representative Huntley of Minnesota chuckled. “I don’t think I’ll take that idea up,” he said. “I’m still pulling the knives out of my back from the last time.”
Carolyn Marshall and Claudia Rowe contributed reporting.