No Smoking

Empty Gamble

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ISO:  400

Drink Alone

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White Balance Setting:  Flourescent

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ISO:  400



Robin is a waitress/bartender at the Gold Dust Casino and Bar.  Working five days a week full time, she, in my opinion is one of the hardest working women I know.  She knows just about every customer that walks through the doors.  She knows how to make just about every drink you could want.  She knows how to talk to people.  When the smoking ban was passed in Billings, different reactions were broadcast from casino to bar throughout the city.  Some saw it as a refreshing change to improve the health of those sitting in the chairs and barstools of these establishments.  Others, including myself, saw the ban as an intrusion on a person's right to smoke in a smoking establishment.  After speaking with Robin, I learned that she shared my view on the ban.  Before the ban, patrons of bars and most casinos could smoke within these establishments.  There were also several casinos within Billings that were designated non-smoking before the ban.  Robin expressed that her job has a steady wage, but the act of recieving tips is a keystone in any waitress/bartender position.  These tips depend on actually having customers within these establishments, and the smoking ban itself threatened the prospect of maintaining a steady customer base.  With the smoking ban, many expected the influx of customers to casinos, not particularly bars, would crumble.  This held true in the first few months of the ban, mainly before many of the bars and casinos of Billings connected "smoke shacks" to their establishments.  But in evaluation now, customer bases for bars and casinos have again, flourished.  But when asking Robin, and other waitresses and bartenders, the atmosphere once experienced before the ban can never be seen or felt again.  Through my perspective, there were non-smoking casinos and bars already established in the city of Billings before the smoking ban.  People had the right to buy cigarettes, so why did they lost their right to smoke them in designated smoking places such as most bars and casinos?  It is unfair to bars, casinos, and Robin to expect them to just take the hit by banning something that everyone already had the choice to avoid.  Smoking is known to cause harm to your health, but nobody forced anybody to gamble or drink in a smoking establishment without other options.