Fuming over setback to casino smoking ban, workers light up in New Jersey Statehouse meeting

abcnews.go.com:

Workers angry that a proposed smoking ban in Atlantic City's casinos seems to be going nowhere protested by lighting up during a state government hearing Thursday in Trenton

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — With prospects for a smoking ban in Atlantic City's casinos looking hazier than ever, workers who want smoking banned took matters into their own hands, lips and lungs Thursday.

Members of the United Auto Workers union disrupted a meeting of a state Assembly committee that had been scheduled to take a preliminary vote on a bill to ban smoking in the casinos by lighting cigarettes and blowing smoke toward legislators.

That vote was canceled Wednesday night when one of the main champions of workers who want smoking banned in the gambling halls gave up on a bill that would end smoking in the nine casinos, and embraced some measures the casino industry wants, including enclosed smoking rooms.

That had some employees burning mad — literally.

Seven members of the union, which represents dealers at three casinos in Atlantic City, began smoking in the meeting hall of the State House Annex, where, like virtually all other workplaces in New Jersey, smoking is prohibited.

“We're not allowed to smoke in your workplace, but you're allowed to smoke in ours,” Daniel Vicente, a regional director of the union, told lawmakers through a cloud of exhaled smoke.

He and the others were soon escorted from the hearing room by State Police, and released without charges.

“They say it's OK for secondhand smoke to be blown in our faces all day, every day,” Vicente said afterward. “We wanted to know if it's OK if we did that in their workplace. They said it was inappropriate and not allowed here."

Angry workers said they want the state’s top Democratic