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Macao Should Ban Smoking in Casinos 

However if the Macao authorities are truly sincere about reducing smoking, they should follow the lead of some states in the U.S. including Colorado and Illinois, [though not yet Nevada, home of Las Vegas] by imposing a ban on smoking inside casinos. When I visited several properties in Macao a couple of weeks ago, including gambling joints owned by local kingpin Stanley Ho, and big boys of Vegas Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn as well as MGM Mirage, I saw people puffing at virtually every baccarat table. It felt like a scene from the original 1960 film, Ocean's Eleven. . . .

However as my colleague Nanette Byrnes and I wrote in a BusinessWeek cover story last week, falling rates of smoking in the U.S. is the big reason Philip Morris International is making an aggressive push into emerging markets where the anti smoking lobbies are less powerful than at home. One of its biggest potential markets is China, where last year it got a license to produce Marlboros.

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