Smoke ban deters gamblers

The smoking ban in pubs and clubs has dramatically affected gambling, slashing spending on "pokies" by 12 per cent and cutting new calls to the Gambling Helpline by a third.

Simply having to go outside for a smoke has apparently made many gamblers stop and go home.

"The cycle is broken. They go out for a cigarette and don't come back," said Clubs New Zealand president Brian Smith. Poker machine revenue at his Bream Bay Club in Northland fell 28 per cent in the year after smoking was banned in December 2004.

The drop in gambling means about $60 million a year less from pub charities for sports and community groups.

A Nelson study by Problem Gambling Foundation clinical director Philip Townshend has found that smokers dropped from 42 per cent of people coming for help in late 2004 to 28 per cent late last year.

Since most gamblers seeking treatment played machines, "perhaps this means that those problem gamblers were effectively treated by the smoke-free environment legislation".

In New Zealand, unlike other places that have banned smoking, the drop appears to have stuck. Gambling Helpline chief executive Krista Ferguson said calls from new gamblers fell 33 per cent in 2005 and had stayed down this year.

Dr Townshend said this might be because New Zealand was unique in having equal numbers of men and women seeking help for gambling, due to the dominance of poker machines.

In North America, the focus of most published studies, problem gambling was associated with middle-aged males and cards, casinos and horses.

"I wonder whether [another factor] might be that in other jurisdictions they have not enforced the non-smoking law as well as we have. If you go into a bar now, there really is no smoking."

He added: "All the overseas people told us that this [drop] would just be a temporary thing, but it doesn't seem to be that temporary in New Zealand."

Gambling and smoking are closely linked here. Health Ministry statistics published this week showed that 58 per cent of problem gamblers in 2002-03 smoked daily, compared with only 22.5 per cent of the rest of the population.

Ms Ferguson said the one-third drop in helpline calls happened as soon as the smoking ban began.

But there have been other factors which have reinforced the ban's effect.

A new Gambling Act in 2003 halved the maximum number of gaming machines in new venues to nine and gave councils power to ban or limit new venues and machine numbers.

Charity Gaming Association chief executive Francis Wevers said new rules raising the percentage of revenue to go to charity from 33 per cent to 37.12 and cutting the commissions to venues had also made some small rural pokies unprofitable.

Poker machine numbers doubled between 1998 and 2003, peaking at 25,221. Since the act they have fallen 18 per cent to 20,739 in June.

New regulations last year banned notes bigger than $20 in machines and required new ones to have "pop-up" messages every half-hour advising how much gamblers had won or lost and asking if they wanted to continue.

Mr Wevers said total spending on pub pokies looked likely to be down 13 to 15 per cent in the year to June.

Internal Affairs spokesman Trevor Henry said preliminary figures indicated a 12 per cent drop in poker machine revenue in pubs and clubs from $1027 million in 2004-05 to $903 million in the latest year. This would cut pub charity payouts to sports and community groups from $360 million in 2004-05 to around $300 million.

But he sounded a note of caution: "There was a recovery in Australia in about three years [after the smoking ban]."

* Gambling helpline 0800 654 655