Alhambra Lets Operators Smoke Out Profits in Bingo

Grand Knight Patrick Gilboy rushed to the Knights of Columbus bingo game Monday night with the good news: The City Council had just exempted public bingo games from a citywide smoking ban.

The room burst into cheers and applause.

“They were starting to yell for ashtrays,” bingo manager Nick Latino said. There was a show of hands. Twenty-six of the 32 players signaled that they wanted to smoke while they played.

The council’s decision Monday was also good news for the St. Therese Church and Temple Beth Torah, both of which reported that their lucrative bingo fund-raisers were losing business because smokers have been playing in other cities since the smoking ban went on the books in July.

At St. Therese, for example, bingo organizers said attendance plummeted more than 50%, to just 60 players.

“If that had continued for another month, we would have had to close,” bingo manager Andy Cullen said.

Alhambra is among more than 50 cities statewide that have adopted smoking bans for designated public areas. It is not known how many communities restrict smoking at bingo games or how many exempt them, said Lucy Hogan, a research librarian for the League of California Cities.

In Alhambra, the impact hurt the bingo business so badly that the council came to the rescue by introducing an exemption ordinance last month.

The Alhambra Knights of Columbus, which had suspended plans to launch bingo nights because of the smoking ban, started gearing up in anticipation of an exemption, Latino said. Monday was opening night.

The knights, who raise money for scholarships and other charities, decided to sponsor bingo games because they promised the biggest returns compared to other fund-raising methods, such as golf tournaments and fireworks sales, Latino said.

Had the smoking ban not been lifted, the knights’ bingo games probably would not have lasted more than 60 days, because of the lack of players, he said.

At St. Therese Church, where 80% to 90% of the players smoke and where smoking was allowed after city officials said they would not enforce the ban while an exemption was under consideration, smokers have started coming back.

“Two weeks ago, we had 50 people because we had no smoking,” Cullen said. Last Thursday, 135 players showed up, many of them puffing away happily during the games. “The word goes around very fast.”

“It’s very good news for the sake of the church and the school that operates the program,” Cullen said.

Proceeds enable the school to buy computers and other equipment and to fund scholarships, he said.

Temple Beth Torah also relies on revenues from its Wednesday night bingo games to pay for supplies and community service programs, but bingo manager Sam Schiffman received news of the exemption with mixed feelings.

Although he knows that permitting smoking would boost bingo revenues and help the temple, he has reservations about changing the smoking policy.

Last year the temple had advertised its games as “100% nonsmoking” and succeeded in attracting some nonsmokers, he said.

But Schiffman conceded that having a majority of nonsmoking players meant fewer dollars. “The smokers are bigger spenders, on average,” he said.

The temple’s bingo organizers have informally agreed to start permitting smoking at their games again, Schiffman said.

“Bingo is a major source of funds for our temple budget. It’s something we can’t afford losing.

“What I’d really like to have is to have a statewide ban,” said Schiffman, a nonsmoker. “Then people can’t go to another town.”