in our Spotlight on Business Report it took several attempts but a bill to ban smoking on the floors of New Jersey casinos cleared its first hurdle the legislation today got approval from the Senate health committee despite opposition from the casino industry and even some Casino workers as Ted Goldberg reports from Trenton the bill still needs to pass the full legislature and get a signature from Governor Murphy but that didn't dampen Spirits Ted, Briana the reaction here was most jubilant when the bill moved out of committee and is now one step closer to becoming law it was not unanimous though you heard some familiar arguments you heard Casino dealers saying how barbaric it was to have cigarette smoke and cigar smoke being blown in their face while working but you also had some folks saying that there could be a cut to business for all of these casinos in Atlantic City so while these arguments are pretty familiar for folks who've been following this the momentum behind making this bill of law is fairly recent on Facebook we're not with all the pictures there was 150 of our friends and co-workers that have died in The Last 5 Years at the from the just from the Taj Mahal not including all the other casinos and we had this fight for them when I was 6 months pregnant and um I was put in the back of a private room with high rollers and they were all smoking cigars and uh you know I had to go home I was it was terrible I was couldn't move from the table this is all about good paying jobs with good benefits and we want to preserve them and protect them I don't understand how anyone just can't see why our our our health is not put before money when we look holistically at the livelihood of the 22,26 casino workers that exist in our Atlantic City casinos we want those jobs to be there we want them to be able to have those jobs and work in their chosen profession there needs to be improvements to to this current status quo but enacting a full ban is going to be an economic catastrophe for Atlantic City for Atlantic County and for the state as a whole the back and forth between senators and some of the folks who were testifying got a little contentious at times as senator Joseph Vitali did not buy the argument that smoking is going to lead people to move their business from Atlantic City to Philadelphia we know the experience of what happened with restaurants and those of us who were part of this legislature back in 2006 we heard from the association restaurant tours and Other Bar owners and who said that they would lose business people would not come uh weight staff and others would be laid off by the score uh and none of that happened the biggest obstacle is this argument that we've been fighting for almost two decades that when things go smoke free that business go goes down what we know is that when casinos go smoke free around the country Revenue goes up and they outperform their smoking counterparts there is uh a competitive advantage in Pennsylvania that we have this issue in New Jersey because most of our customers come from New Jersey Pennsylvania and New York so they will simply go over the bridge to Pennsylvania and take their business there I have more people that will come and play that refuse to come because of the smoke that will over that's you know 10 times more than the people were going to lose from smoking more people would actually come to AC because they're going to give them a better experience free of cancer causing carcinogens and toxins and also with only 11% of the US population being smokers you're opening your doors to more potential Players Casino employees tell me they know there's still a long path ahead before this bill becomes a law but after how today went they're sounding pretty optimistic