Vanessa Baker brought more than just testimony to the State House basement Thursday.
She came armed with inhalers, eye drops, nose spray, and ibuprofen, the medication she relies on to treat the constant symptoms triggered by lingering cigarette smoke at Bally’s casinos in Lincoln and Tiverton, where she works as an iGaming supervisor.
There was a time she was able to stop using them: when Bally’s temporarily banned smoking after it reopened Rhode Island’s two casinos which had been closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But those rules were lifted by March 2022.
“It took me nine months to get put back on all that medication and I had to take a sick leave of absence for six months to get my lungs back to where I could work,” Baker told the House Committee on Finance.
