Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | March 2014 14 In Focus for re-election to the Legistlative Assembly. SJM’s operating entity, Sociedade de Jogos de Macau, the successor to Stanley Ho’s monopoly and the town’s largest portfolio of casinos, had applied for smoking areas at the top end of the 49% range and had secured 44% on average across 19 properties. Seventeen of these casinos are leased to third parties and operate independently of corporate management, making it difficult to crack down on things like table- shifting. Which is one reason why SJM would have a tough time complying with subsequent air quality tests. The other reason is that most of the third-party casinos are also among the oldest in town and they’re relatively small and characterized at some locations by tightly packed pits under low ceilings serviced by aging, inadequate ventilation systems. Representatives of a labor group called the Association for the Promotion of Casino Workers’ Rights directly petitioned the Health Bureau and the Labor Affairs Bureau. That got them a meeting but little else beyond an assurance that the division by floor space, such as it is, would be strictly enforced and that the results of the air quality tests would be made public. Separately, the Health Bureau issued a directive to the industry requiring it to exempt employees suffering fromheart or lung ailments and those at least threemonths’ pregnant from working in smoking areas. By early February the complaints had made their way to the Legislative Assembly, where some members responded with the radical notion of a full smoking ban. This would bring the casinos into line with other public spaces in the city, most of which have been off limits to smokers since 2012. Interestingly, it was Ms Leong who spoke out the loudest for this. The government resisted, which is even more interesting. The Health Bureau’s plan is to review the law in 2015, and it appears they’re not budging from that no matter how patently flawed the rules have shown themselves to be, which proved convenient for Ms Leong, at any rate. She was re-elected handily later in the year. Failing Grades Last April, the Macau Health Bureau released the promised results of an initial round of air quality tests, which showed 28 of the 44 casinos failing in at least one of six criteria. Sixteen were in the SJM portfolio, Melco Crown Entertainment had eight (mostly its Mocha Clubs slot halls), Galaxy Entertainment had three (two of them managed under the company’s City Clubs franchise), and the other was Wynn Macau. Eight failed for carbon dioxide. Six failed for a class of pollutants known as “volatile organic compounds,”which can occur naturally or can be man-made and tend to be found in all indoor environments. They’re produced by plants, animals, microbes and molds and fungi, others are the detritus of paints and coatings, cleaning solvents and gases such as methane. Benzene, a known human carcinogen, is one of them. It’s found in stored fuels, automobile exhaust and environmental tobacco smoke. Most of the failures were for “inhalable suspended particulates”. These can be solid or liquid and work like aerosols when they mix China isn’t just the world’s biggest tobacco consumer, it’s the biggest producer, home to a vast and flourishing business that’s run as the monopoly of a state-owned enterprise known as the China National Tobacco Corporation. In 2010, according to data compiled by the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, it cranked out 2.78 trillion cigarettes.