freedom 2 choose-what an idea!

Something very strange has happened in Lyon County, Iowa US of A! Although Iowa has had a statewide ban for the past 3 years, smoking is permitted in casino's like the newly built Grand Falls. Iowa is now finding itself host to gamblers from South Dakota & Minnesota-smoking gamblers!

Leave me alone I'm having a ball!

Not unsurprisingly, smoking & gambling go hand in hand so Grand Falls has gone 50/50 in favour of.....err.....no one! Now there's a novelty! Apparently there are 900 slot machines, 450 of which are in the smoking section and 450 in the non smoking section. Guess which one turns over more revenue?

I just want a lever playing field ffs!

Can this be true? Is it possible that some bright spark has at last seen the light? Has someone, somewhere finally realised that smokers do deserve respect and the same rights as those killjoy, pesky no smokers-after all, they spend plenty of money as well!

"Not everyone in the smokers side smokes" said Sharon Haselhoff (Casino General Manager), "but we have a variety of machines on both sides and by looking at our 'coin-in', our smoking side definitely has a lot more 'coin-in' than the non smoking side!"

Money, money money, I've got it and you want it, get real!

Well 'shiver me timbers and slap ma thighs', the same rules apply over the pond as here-smokers are more generous spenders! But then it comes with the territory really, for smokers are quite happy to spend money on cigarettes, knowing that government is carving them up with tax so free spending on pleasurable pursuits is hardly going to be drudgery for them!

So, it looks to me as if Iowa have come up with the perfect scenario as they are taking valuable business from neighbouring states and providing for allcomers-well, it's not rocket science really is it!

non smokers integrating with smokers as well-whatever next?

Perhaps some fool over here will actually sit up and take note of this development and then sit down again and think, "I wonder if that could work here?"

Answer-of course is could (and would). You give me two pubs for a month, on the same road, one hundred yards apart and I will kit them out exactly the same as each other-but with two different signs.

All we want is fairness, is that too much to ask?

Both will serve exactly the same beers, shorts, crisps, nuts etc and open/close at exactly the same times. I know now which one will take MORE money, which one will easily turn a PROFIT, which one WON'T need to put silly half-arsed promotions on to try and draw customers in. And, like some of those gamblers, even as a non smoker I KNOW which one I WILL BE IN!

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