VALLEY CENTER -- The opening last month of North County's largest smoke-free casino wing was one step in a long evolution that's being shaped by health concerns, profit motive and improving technology, people in the gambling industry said last week.

People who study the industry also say that anti-smoking laws are shaping that evolution, albeit indirectly for the tribal casinos that account for the bulk of the industry in Southern California.

Valley View Casino, which opened a vast smoke-free wing on Dec. 19, is on the reservation of the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians, just off North Lake Wohlford Road. Like other tribal casinos that have introduced and then expanded nonsmoking areas, its move was entirely voluntary; California's 1998 ban on smoking inside public buildings has no force on Indian reservations, which are administered by tribes and by the U.S. federal government.

Economist Bill Eadington, who has done consulting work for casinos and state governments, said smoking restrictions have cut casino revenue by 15 to 20 percent in states that have introduced them. That's mainly because of the large overlap between smokers and gamblers and because many gamblers puff especially heavily when their money is on the table, Eadington said.

But states' laws against smoking are also giving rise to an entire generation that has grown up without being exposed to secondhand smoke in public places, Eadington noted. As a result, he said, many young gamblers now expect the same air quality in a casino that they find in a bar or a restaurant.

Near Reno, where Eadington directs the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, a tribe experimented with a nonsmoking casino in the early 1990s but changed course because the venture flopped, he said.

Still, casinos now consider nonsmoking wings and million-dollar ventilation systems to be good investments, he said.

"California tribal casinos, generally because they are so new, have adopted a lot of that technology," Eadington said.

More tribes also are adding or expanding nonsmoking sections of their casinos, said Narinder Dhaliwal, director of the California Clean Air Project. Forty-two of 62 tribal casinos in California now have nonsmoking areas, according to a count by the state-funded nonprofit.

Valley View has had nonsmoking areas since it opened in 2001, said General Manager Michael Gorczynski. The casino was offering lower-limit blackjack tables and other enticements last year to draw customers to the previous nonsmoking area, a corner that was separated from the rest of the gaming floor by glass walls. The new smoke-free wing includes that area plus an expansion.

Casino representatives have spoken of the new wing as mainly an amenity for existing customers. In an e-mailed statement, Gorczynski said it was popular, but casino representatives said it isn't yet clear whether it has brought in large numbers of new customers.

At 25,000 square feet, the self-contained wing represents about one-quarter of the casino's gambling area.

It dwarfs nonsmoking areas at other local tribal casinos. It's roughly twice the size of the one at Pechanga Resort & Casino, California's largest casino. It's also larger than commercial -- non-tribal -- casinos in Oceanside and Lake Elsinore, which are subject to the 1998 ban.

Relatively few such areas are as separated from smoking areas as Valley View's is, Dhaliwal said. Harrah's Rincon Casino's nonsmoking area isn't walled off, and the nonsmoking area at Pala Casino was recently moved from a closed room to a corner of the gaming floor.

But even walled-off areas expose employees to secondhand smoke when doors open and close, and when employees move from one area to the next, Dhaliwal said. An advanced ventilation system, while often a significant improvement, is also an imperfect solution, she said.

Dhaliwal said her organization's goal is to cajole every casino in the state to go smoke-free. Only one -- tiny Lucky Bear Casino, on a rural byway in Humboldt County -- has done so, she said. A second, Win River Casino in Redding, aims to do so by the end of the year, she said.

Dhaliwal said she's optimistic: "They really are concerned about their workers' health as well as the patrons'."

Pechanga's concern extended to a state-of-the-art ventilation system that has cost $22 million, said spokesman Robert Bledsoe.

Pechanga installed an early version of the system in 2002 and upgraded it in 2004 when the casino was renovated. The system can filter in three minutes as much air as is in the entire volume of the casino. That ratio, a key statistic for air-filtration systems, is five minutes in most Las Vegas casinos and four minutes for a couple of Vegas' best, Bledsoe said. Bledsoe said he spends plenty of time on the casino floor without aggravating his asthma.

Eadington, the UN-Reno economist, said he hasn't quantified the payoff of higher-tech air filters.

He also said that industry studies have generally shown slot machines in nonsmoking areas to generate less revenue per day than those in smoking areas, though he surmised that the areas may simply be too large for the finite number of gamblers who aren't satisfied with casinos' air filtration.

Still, he said, increasing health concerns among patrons and employees are sure to have a continuing effect on casino policies.

And an increasingly solid link between secondhand smoke and lung disease may also serve as fodder for lawsuits from non-tribal employees who later end up sick, he added.

"At some point, this is going to catch up with tribal casinos," Eadington said.

Contact staff writer Chris Bagley at (760) 740-5444 or cbagley@nctimes.com. Bagley blogs about local economic trends at http://bizblogs.nctimes.com.