The law’s effect on the bingo business remains to be seen.
By Kathryn Skelton
Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Ten feet from the door, the woman stopped in her tracks.

“Tonight, it’s tonight?” she said, reaching for a cellphone in her purse. “I don’t know if my sister knows that, I don’t know if she’ll be able to hack it.”

She’d just gotten word: Bingo parlors in Maine were now smoke-free.

The new law kicked into effect on Saturday. At the door leading to a basement bingo hall on Canal Street before game time Sunday, it certainly had its naysayers.

“I don’t like it at all,” said Beatrice Smith of Lewiston, who was smoking, a bag of nine daubers beside her. Come this winter, she’ll just stop playing, “I won’t stand out here and freeze.”

Harriett Schneider of Lewiston stood outside smoking with a friend from New York. She wasn’t happy either.

“Liquor, gambling and cigarettes belong together,” said Schneider.

“My husband tonight twisted my arm to come here,” she added. He enjoys bingo, too, and he doesn’t smoke. She’d already grabbed the nearest table to the door so she could take quick trips outside.

Jane Burns, who runs the bingo games on Canal Street twice a week, said about 70 percent of her regular crowd of players smoke.

“Last night we gave them a smoke break. I looked out over there, there was nobody,” she said. They’d all stepped outside.

Burns was glad for the clearer air, though she wondered what the change would mean for business.

Fred Gurney runs Pleasant Street Bingo on Sundays and Wednesdays. He said he hadn’t heard too much grumbling beforehand, just a little “state’s taking another one of our rights away, blah, blah, blah.”

The change could attract people who stayed away when there was smoking, he said.

He’s not sure if that’ll balance out the people who leave.

“I stop seeing a lot of people that stop spending an awful lot of money, I’ll question it,” Gurney said.

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