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The American Gaming Association has fought hard since the mid 90s for a national building code of standards to accommodate tobacco smoke. The main argument behind this lobbying was the fact that prohibiting smoking would be bad for the business. However, many states have finally passed indoor smoking prohibitions which include casinos and this has caused the Association to finally back down! Judy Patterson, executive director of the American Gaming Association said that fighting smoking bans "Is an uphill battle. All the momentum is with the health groups and this became one of those issues that could not be handled industry wide". She went on to say that states such as Colorado and New Jersey, which once exempted these no smoking laws, have now reconsidered their decision this year. Thus it’s become even harder for the Association to fight these exemptions because the majority of the states have come to a decision which is not in favour of the Association. The Association suffered a huge blow in 2005 when a national advisory group, which specialized in setting air-ventilation standards, concluded that no filtration system would be able to effectively remove the health risks associated with second-hand smoke. Few casinos have voluntarily banned smoking. The newest casinos are installing more effective - and costly - ventilation systems to minimize complaints about smokers. Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at University of California, San Francisco said that "The casinos have realized they are on the losing side of this, that the claims of economic disaster aren't true and that they don't want to be burning up chips on this issue because it could hurt them on other issues that are more important to them”. It remains to be seen that if the casino business will be affected by this ruling; but as of now the Association is backing down on their attempts of fighting for smoking rights!