Smoking Bans Mean Fewer Charity Bingo Players, Groups Say

Organizers of charity bingo games are complaining of declining revenue in states where smoking in businesses has been banned, reports The New York Times.

One manager of a bingo game estimates that smokers outnumber nonsmokers three to one; others insist they won’t be able to recruit new nonsmoking players. Groups in California, New Jersey, New York, and Washington State told the newspaper that smoking bans are taking a serious toll on their budgets and on the money they give away.

After Minnesota adopted a statewide ban on smoking in indoor workplaces, charity-gambling revenue dropped 13 percent in the last quarter of 2007 compared with the year before. “It’s had a profound effect on us here,” says Charlie Lindstrom, who manages bingo night at a Minnesota chapter of the American Legion. “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.”

Legislators say that attendance will bounce back eventually.

“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,” says Minnesota State Representative Thomas Huntley, a chief sponsor of Minnesota’s Freedom to Breathe Act.

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