People visit Las Vegas to misbehave or at least to act in ways that they might not at home.
That might mean throwing a few dollars on your favorite sports team, playing at the tables, or sitting down at a slot machine. Gambling, however, is not the city's only vice, and on the Las Vegas Strip, you can indulge in a variety of ways.
Gluttony might actually be the easiest sin to indulge in on the Strip. Nearly every famous chef you know from television has multiple restaurants mostly packed pretty close together on the South and Central Strips. You can eat burgers from either Bobby Flay or Gordon Ramsay or at fine dining establishments from those same two big-name culinary brands.
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You also have Guy Fieri, Giada De Laurentiis, Wolfgang Puck, Robert Irvine, and a host of other huge celebrity chefs trying to feed you at various Caesars Entertainment CZR and MGM Resorts International properties. And, of course, the "Cake Boss" Buddy Valastro not only has multiple eateries at Caesars properties, but he also operates cake vending machines so you can make bad choices late at night.
The Las Vegas Strip also has legal cannabis, a fact that's hard to miss given that the smell permeates the open sidewalks outside the casinos. Smoking pot, however, remains strictly off-limits inside casinos and hotels because companies like Caesars and MGM defer to federal law under which marijuana remains illegal.
But while you can't smoke pot while blackjack, poker, and other Las Vegas table games, man Strip casinos do allow you to smoke tobacco. Now, The Venetian and its sister property The Palazzo have changed their policy. Beginning Nov. 6, both will allow the smoking of cigarettes, cigars, and vapes at their table games.
The move comes at a time when there has been growing pressure to ban smoking at casinos all across the country even in Las Vegas.
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Most Las Vegas Strip casinos allow smoking at table games
Generally, most Las Vegas Strips casinos allow smoking at table games and while people play slots. Many properties also have non-smoking areas, but they are often adjacent to smoking areas. In addition, some, including The Venetian and The Palazzo, under their new policy, will allow customers to request smoke-free tables.
Only Park MGM offers a fully non-smoking property among all of the Las Vegas Strip resort casinos.
The reason for that is, of course, profit. Casinos don't want gamblers to have to leave the table to smoke as they may not come back.
Workers, however, have different ideas as they are being forced to breathe in secondhand smoke simply to do their jobs.
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Atlantic City casino workers have been pushing to have smoking banned in their city. That effort has not been supported by their union.
“I would bet everything I have that one year after a smoking ban, we will have a 10-to-15% decline in gambling revenue,” Local 54 President Bob McDevitt told the AP. “Of that I am certain. As soon as we did it, Pennsylvania would double down on smoking. It would close one, maybe two casinos in Atlantic City.”
That type of thinking has been prevalent with union leadership in Las Vegas as well.
Casino workers want smoke banned (sort of)
While Las Vegas faces a potential strike from its hospitality workers, the union representing them has not made a ban on smoking one of its asks. That's because union members are somewhat divided on whether casinos should ban smoking.
"While about 90% of its members don’t smoke, only 61% support a ban in casinos, according to member surveys taken in 2022," Culinary Local 226 Secretary-Treasurer Ted Pappageorge told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
He said that while the number of members who want a ban has been rising, that's it's not a pressing issue for the union. That could be because many members of the union worry that tips will go down and some customers might stay away if smoking is banned.
That's something UNLV Masters candidate Emi K. Sakevich examined in her 2016 thesis.
"Enacting a smoking ban in Las Vegas casinos would be difficult to endorse without confirming actual consumer reactions. Casinos rely on the consistency of a smoker’s habit; by not requiring them to get up and leave their gaming area to satisfy their addiction, smokers are able to continue to game and provide revenue. Jeopardizing this practice will disturb expected revenues, and anticipating the effects of the disturbance is a gamble most businesses would not take," she wrote.
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There's also a bigger expectation of "sin" in Las Vegas compared to other markets, the paper explained.
"Las Vegas has a reputation of being a safe harbor for various vices, and a smoking ban can harm that reputation," they added.
