ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — With their push to end smoking in Atlantic City's casinos going nowhere fast in either the courts or the state Legislature, casino workers and supporters of smoke-free gambling halls demonstrated Thursday outside a hotel where New Jersey's governor was due to speak.
The workers have been pushing for four years to end an exemption in New Jersey's clean air law that allows smoking inside the nine casinos. They say they or their co-workers are becoming ill with cancer, heart disease and other conditions related to exposure to second-hand smoke. Gov.
Phil Murphy, a Democrat, has said he will sign a bill to end casino smoking once it reaches his desk. But he has invested little political capital in pushing for it to happen. His office referred a reporter to a statement he made in a call-in show in September on News 12 New Jersey in which the governor questioned why workers are blaming him for the impasse.
“I have an enormous amount of sympathy with them; they’re somehow blaming this on me,” Murphy said on the show. “I just want to repeat what I have been saying for about five years: If a bill comes to my desk that bans smoking in casinos in Atlantic City, I will sign it. Period.
I am not equivocating, and I have not equivocated about that. The way to solve this is through legislation." A bill to end casino smoking has been stalled in the state Legislature for years without the state's Democratic leadership allowing it to progress to full votes .