The casinos could easily fix part of the problem by adjusting their paytables.
This won't happen. Casino's can't pay their bills on machines they don't make money on. Video poker is being replaced with penny slots. The only reason VP is still there is to appease the few players left who still play them. Casinos in the past had whole sections of VP games. Today, VP is allocated to the back of the bus.
Where I play VP you have two choices. You can stay home or you can continue to play and accept the cost as an admission fee. As the odds drop and the taxes increase this cost grows larger. There will be a time when this is the case all across the country. Vegas will hold out as long as the players do. Unless young people come back to the game, when the players are gone so will the game.
Well, as long as I am going to run a casino, I would do the following to get the young people to play besides smoke and drink. I would have bonus rounds in the machines that would spit out vouchers for clothing stores in the casino mall that the young people would frequent and a voucher for free car detailing on a subsequent visit at the on site car detailing center. I wouldnt do it ,but vouchers for free cigarettes would keep them there forever. The young at the casinos are worse than ever in chain smoking.
When you're young you think nothing will hurt you. You think bad things only happen to someone else. Our heroes all smoked, so we did. I bought my first pack of cigarettes at 13. I remember they cost me 25 cents a pack. I didn't like smoking, but I thought it made me look cool. The first cigarettes I bought had a filter. I threw them away and switched to Lucky Strikes because I thought they made me look tougher. When I was 21 I started getting lung infections that turned into pneumonia. One day I threw the cigarettes out the window of my car and never went back to smoking. I was lucky.
My mother wasn't so lucky. She smoked all her life. The doctors told me she was going to die. I had to tell her myself. It was hard. Smoking took 15 years off her life. She died screaming at the EMTs telling them she couldn't breath. It was horrible. I wish I had taken a video that day so I could post it on YouTube. It might change some minds.
I hope some young people read this. I started at 13 as well. Used to roll up the pack of Chesterfields in my tshirt sleeve. I was on the golf team in 8th grade The course had lots of hills. I also did some caddying carrying 2 heavy bags at once. It didnt take long to realize I couldnt climb the hills while smoking and carrying two bags. I never even finished my first carton. Never smoked another one since. My parents both smoked at least a pack a day. My mom developed cancer around age 40 and my dad developed a bad heart around the same age. Both my parents quit cold turkey in the 1960s. Damage had been done however and it affected them severly from then on.
One more. My best friend got married many years ago We went to the wedding My daughter was 16. My best friend’s brother sitting ar our table asked my permission to dance one fast rock dance with my daughter. He was 44. I remember he was out of breath after the dance. He smoked between 2 and 3 packs a day. The following week my best friend found his brother dead from heart failure. The findings attributed his death to smoking.
Don't forget the new school vice, vaping, which is really cool. But equally or more addictive. Great flavors. Juul is worth $16B. Too old to succumb myself.