Ban May Spell Trouble

Bar owners may be the commandos and the tobacco lobby the brass. But in the great war against California’s new smoking ban, the anonymous grunts are surely the bingo players and their unlikely beneficiaries--charities.

In the month since the law took effect, bingo parlors across the region have reported profit losses as deep as 20%. The cause: the inability of many mavens of the board to forsake their reliance on the leaf. In moving to protect its citizens’ health, it seems, the state Legislature underestimated the powerful link between smoking and gambling.

“They are playing, they get excited, and they want a cigarette--but they can’t,” said Julio Delcid, bingo manager for the Fully Alive Center, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in Reseda that counts on bingo for 40% of its $1-million annual budget.

“We have gotten calls from people who say they . . . will go play in Las Vegas or on Indian reservations,” said Steven Montgomery, co-owner of the Bingo Bugle, a trade newspaper for bingo players and managers published in Burbank.

No longer relegated to church basements or local lodges, bingo has become big business and an unparalleled source of funding for countless charities.

About 60 million players nationwide wager $5 billion a year at charitable, Indian high-stakes and Nevada casino bingo games, industry analysts say.

Bingo games generated about $40 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, according to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Commission Investigation Division, which oversees 47 licensed charitable bingo parlors in Los Angeles. The city receives slightly less than 1%, or about $400,000, of the take. The rest is distributed among charities.

In Los Angeles County, tens of thousands of players jam about 200 bingo halls every day, vying for cash and prizes. Most players spend a minimum of $20 a game for three sheets with six cards each. About 25 games are played in a typical four-hour session with a maximum legal payout of $250 per game. Charities also rake in money from instant winner lottery-type tickets and bingo games played during intermission.

Although the Assembly voted narrowly last week to lift the ban on smoking in bars, pool halls, bingo parlors and card clubs, the measure faces an uphill fight in the Senate and could take more than a year to resolve.

Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), who last year derailed a similar Assembly bill aimed at allowing smoking to continue in targeted establishments, did not consider the impact the measure would have on charities, said Sandy Harrison, Lockyer’s press secretary.

“I believe his position was that the public health problem outweighed whatever economic gains or losses that may result from this ban,” Harrison said.

That has not proved to be a popular position among some local bingo operators. Some parlors have even begun distributing lollipops along with bingo cards to give anxious smokers something to take the edge off.

“We are struggling in a low socioeconomic community, trying to provide services, and now the rights of our players are being abrogated by some social-engineering legislators who have no idea of the profound consequences their actions will have on charitable organizations,” said Michael Lombardi, who operates the bingo games of a Carson community child-care center.

Lombardi’s organization receives about 88% of its funding from the state. The rest comes from bingo.

“Eighty percent of the people who play at our facility smoke. It is my opinion that if we don’t allow smoking, we’ll lose so many players that we might as well go out of business,” Lombardi said.

“The money we make from bingo makes the difference between offering the quality services for kids we do now and just baby-sitting them,” Lombardi said. “Without bingo, we’re dead.”

Some bingo operators consider the smoking ban a dire enough threat that they have chosen to practice what Lombardi calls “civil disobedience” and ignore the law.

“We’re doing this not because we’re lawbreakers,” Lombardi said. “We’re doing this out of desperation for those 200 kids and their families who depend on us.” The center plans to continue ignoring the ban, and if citied, will go to court, he said.

Like many bar patrons, bingo regulars argue that their pastime and smoking go together. Volunteers in Carson and Inglewood estimated that 75% to 80% of their patrons are smokers.

“I need my caffeine, and I need my nicotine,” said bingo enthusiast and Culver City resident Evelyn Williams. “Without those things, it’s really not bingo.”

Not everyone believes that the ban will be that disastrous.

Hollywood Park, which operates a large daily bingo hall leased out to local charities, noticed an early drop in business of about 20%, said volunteer Carson Tiamalu. But in recent days, business has picked back up and is approaching pre-ban levels, Tiamalu add.

Big Brothers of Greater Los Angeles is among the groups that have noted lower smoker turnout at its bingo games in Lancaster and North Hollywood, said spokeswoman Nancy Dufford. Bingo profits accounted for $760,000 of the agency’s $2-million annual operating budget in 1996.

Asked what the agency would do without bingo, Dufford said: “Got any ideas? We would have to find alternative ways of raising money.”

At Cri-Help, a drug rehabilitation center in North Hollywood, about 50 smokers have stayed away from Saturday bingo games that usually draw about 500 players. Bingo money makes up 15% of the center’s $4-million operating budget, said bingo manager Mike Baraboo.

“The smokers are furious,” Baraboo said. “They have to get up and go outside to smoke. The nonsmokers are just as mad because the game is interrupted. It’s a lose-lose situation.”

The Knights of Columbus in Canoga Park has experienced a drop from 150 players to 110, and with them the dollars used to fund scholarships, senior citizens’ breakfasts and an annual youth track meet.

“We are losing at least $480 a night,” said Tom Dwyer, bingo manager for the Knights of Columbus. “It’s a nightmare. That bill should have never gone through.”

Chandler Lodge Foundation, a sober-living house for men in North Hollywood, is seeing a decrease in the players coming to its bingo games. The money raised through bingo pays for rent, food, clothing and bedding for 30 men who live at the house. Bingo brings in $36,000 of the organization’s $180,000 annual budget.

“The charity operates on such a narrow margin that even the loss of two people is the difference between making a profit and losing money,” said David Hernandez, the foundation’s program director.

Outside Fully Alive’s bingo hall in Mission Hills, smokers fumed at lawmakers for driving a wedge between their two vices.

“It’s an infringement on our rights,” said Gertrude Golden of North Hills, daintily holding a cigarette between her fingers. “They should concentrate on getting guns off the street and drugs off the highway.”

“They already had separate smoking and nonsmoking rooms here,” said Rose Sibal of Simi Valley. “What’s the big deal?”

Carol Fox of Sylmar complained that the five-minute smoking breaks are too short. “You get a power rush when you smoke too fast,” she said, taking a long drag. “It’s not enjoyable anymore.”

The adrenaline rush smokers get as they puff, mark numbers and wait to holler, “Bingo!,” is a very real phenomenon.

“Playing bingo gives people a feeling of walking on the edge of excitement and makes them want to tap into their other addictions such as smoking,” said Bob Day, a former smoker who helps others kick the habit through Nicotine Anonymous.

Back inside the bingo hall, nonsmoker Marta Bustos of Glendale said she was grateful for the ban.

“The smoking was too much,” Bustos said, sitting in a room once designated for nonsmokers. “I used to get a sinus headache, and the smell would be in my clothes. I would come home and my daughter would say, ‘No one has to ask you where you’ve been.’ ”