The S-Word

I once did a column on the dreaded f-word. This one is on the "s-word." It stands for something infinitely worse: smoking. After all, swearing can get you a 10-minute penalty, but smoking can kill you - and anyone else nearby. OK, so maybe this column won't be that funny, but Card Player lets me do a semiserious column every five years.

It's been a long time since I mouthed off on this subject because living in California and breathing pure air in cardrooms has spoiled me. But after a couple of recent trips to Vegas, I was reminded of how pervasive smoking can still be elsewhere. It seemed like every guy walking down Fremont Street had a beer bottle in one hand and a butt (a cigarette and sometimes a babe's, as well) in the other, and every old granny glued to a slot machine had a ciggie dangling from her wizened lips.

Then I rediscovered how annoying it could be to play poker in cardrooms that still permit smoking. Yes, the tournament battle has been won because anti-smoking activists like Kasey Castle argued that tournament players are trapped and cannot escape to another seat. But conditions can be even worse when you're playing live. Say you're seated next to some chain smoker with an ashtray inches from you, and smoke from his smoldering butt is going right up your nose. Finally, after choking and coughing for two hours, you spot an open seat opposite you and quickly move there. Ten minutes later you have smokers on both sides of you, and you're worse off than ever. You might have four smokers at the table, with fumes coming at you from all directions, to say nothing of vapors from adjacent tables and from onlookers. Most smokers try to be considerate by holding their butts behind their chairs. That helps, but the stuff is still all around you. And then you have "wannabe" smokers who can't even filter the stuff through their lungs by inhaling, but simply blow out big clouds that envelope you like the hoods they place on people's heads before they get hung.

Why, I thought, should live-game players still have to put up with smoke while tournament players don't? That's discrimination, isn't it?

I thought about the poker friends I had known who were killed by cigarettes, including early Card Player columnists Tex Sheehan and "Bulldog" Sykes. More recently, well-known players such as Jack Lewis and Nancy Nevits had their lives cut short from smoking. I desperately wanted to write something that might make some small difference, but couldn't think of anything new. Then, several newspaper and magazine articles came along to give me the material I needed.

The first was a report on the most comprehensive study of smoking ever done, showing that tobacco smoke is a "much deadlier carcinogen and triggers a broader variety of cancers than researchers had previously believed." The study also provided the first definitive evidence that secondhand smoke causes lung cancer, increasing the risk to those exposed by about 20 percent.

The report came from an international panel of 29 experts convened by the United Nations International Agency for Research on Cancer to conduct the first comprehensive evaluation of smoking research since 1986. The study determined that at least half of the people who smoke worldwide will be killed prematurely by smoking-related diseases, including cancer, heart disease, and emphysema. Half of those deaths will occur in middle age, with an average loss of 20 to 25 years of life expectancy. As for secondhand smoke, the report noted that there are 4,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke, which can be measured in the body fluids and urine of exposed nonsmokers.

"It is now well-established that they are being breathed in by nonsmokers, absorbed, and are having an effect on genetic material," researchers announced.

Another story reported on a study being undertaken by a medical group to determine how much effect secondhand smoke has on nonsmoking dealers, cocktail waitresses, and other employees of Nevada casinos (providing they can find a poker dealer who doesn't smoke, that is). I predict the report will be eye-opening, and I hope it might lead to legislation protecting the rights of such employees.

For a while I thought about addressing smokers directly, pleading with them to evaluate the risks they are taking, and to avail themselves of the wide varieties of stop-smoking aids that are out there, such as nicotine patches and gum, Zyban, clinics, Internet sites, and so on. But then I read that New York state had increased the tax on cigarettes by about $1.50, bringing the cost of a pack to around $7. Seven bucks?! If a two-pack-a-day smoker is willing to spend more than $5,000 a year to satisfy his nicotine addiction and support the second-most destructive habit on the planet (second only to Omaha high-low), there's a fat chance that he'd listen to me.

No, it's up to the nonsmoking poker players, who, after all, constitute a majority of maybe 70 percent or more, to go on the offensive and clear the air in those dwindling numbers of cardrooms that still permit smoking. The evidence is now incontrovertible: Secondhand smoke is not just annoying, it is deadly. So, talk to management, write letters, and get up petitions. Do not threaten boycotts, which are counterproductive, but if you do decide to take your business elsewhere, let management know why you did so. If you want to download a summary of the UN agency's study and show it around, it can be found on the Internet at the agency's website, www.iarc.fr.

Oh, and one final thought: One of my pet peeves is to see cardroom personnel puffing away while they're working. If nothing else, I'd like to see this bothersome practice forbidden. I'm sorry if this irritates all the smoking staffers I know, but why should they be allowed to endanger the health of the players who pay for their salaries?

OK, that's all I have to say for now. I hope that another anti-smoking column won't be needed five years from now, and if it is, that I won't have expired from secondhand smoke by that time.