Clearing The Air

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Smoking ban leads to casino losses and city government jobs which relied on those casino revenues

City officials in Alton have been forced to cut six jobs from next year's budget, in part because of a $1 million revenue loss from the city's casino......The Fire Department will lay off four firefighters and the Police Department will not fill two currently open slots, Alton Mayor Don Sandidge said.

Story found online here.

While the pharmaceutical company and its private foundation which funded the bans anticipates record sales of smoking cessation products, such as Nicoderm, to reach $4.6 billion annually.

Meanwhile, dumbfounded lawmakers who enacted these laws written by Johnson & Johnson Company's Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) are left wondering if they were hoodwinked into enacting economically damaging, special interest laws.