should gambling be legalized

"The higher one's income , the more one will tend to see gambling as entertainment or as a way to socialize with other people.. Another disturbing situation in the gambling community is

Should Gambling Be Legalized?

Over the past twenty or so years, great wealth and

improved economic and

social conditions have been promised to the communities that have embraced

legalized gambling However, with twenty years of experience it

is time to

look back and analyze whether this is true or not

It could easily be said that gambling is as American as apple pie

Gambling has shaped American history since its beginning

Lotteries were used

by The First Continental Congress to help finance the

Revolutionary war Many

of our founding fathers, such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas

Jefferson, and George

Washington, have sponsored private lotteries It has been said that "Our

founding fathers were just numbers guys in wigs" At one time baseball would

have seemed to be the American pastime This is not so now In recent years,

the attendance at casinos has nearly doubled the attendance at all major league

baseball games, with close to 130 million people visiting casinos every year.1

With so much money at stake, the average gambler does not stand a chance

against this big business The casinos go to every length to analyze what makes

a gambler bet, stay longer, and loose as much money as possible

Gamblers who come to casinos with the intention of

winning money are

habitually disappointed As casino crime lord, Meyer Lansky's universal

gambling truth states; "Gamblers never win, the house never

loses"2 Slot

Machines and most table games allow players to make bets where the probability

of winning is relatively high Frequent wins are characterized

by low payouts

These frequent wins encourage further gambles with low payouts

Frequent winning, low paying games are not the only way casinos get

people to keep playing Nothing less that psychological warfare

is going on at

casinos across the country "The days of shaved dice, missing face cards and

rigged roulette wheels are long gone But the pursuit of

profitability in the

corporate era of gambling has turned the average casino into a financially

hazardous place for betters"3 The casino's beliefs are all based

on the fact

that since the house has an advantage over the player, the longer the house can

keep the player playing, the more money the house will make The gambling

industry spends millions each year to whether wider isles,

fresher air, and back

rests on the chairs at slot machines make a player stay longer.4

And why would

the casino care if somebody is comfortable? Because if each better stays for

just a few more minutes, it could mean millions for the casinos

Casinos have false ceilings with rooms above them where some people

watch for cheats and swindlers From these same vantage points, are other

people with alternate jobs They are hired to observe and study what situations

encourage gamblers to play longer And as stated before, the longer people play,

the more money casinos receive

These tricks of the trade are not just directed at the comfort level of

the players, but also at their subconscious Adding a certain scent into the

air can make slot players spend up to fifty percent more than average at times

When money is turned into chips, in the player's mind, it

decreases it's value

When a gambler asks a dealer for change for a hundred dollar bill, the dealer is

under orders to give the player the lowest denomination possible,

in five dollar

chips The player would easily spend the twenty chips as pocket change But

a twenty-five dollar chip is much more likely to be saved or even cashed in

Colors are a very important part of the subconcience mind Betters are

easily drawn to bright red machines, but tire of them quickly Many casinos now

put bright red machines on the outside of isles Inside the isles are the more

calm cool blue and greens that seem to encourage the player to stay longer

Gamblers are at the mercy of the big business casinos Most people do

not fully realize how much they are controlled by institutions who have made a

science of studying gamblers behavior at the gaming tables

It is a fact that the economic status of a gambler, usually determines

the psychological meaning of gaming for him or her "The higher one's income ,

the more one will tend to see gambling as entertainment or as a way to socialize

with other people Conversely, the lower one's income, the more gambling tends

to be seen as an investment"5 With the poor who cannot afford such investments

as the stock market or real estate, gambling is meant to be less as play and

more as a sincere chance to transform their lives for the better While the

poor do not spend much more than gambling than middle income families, they do

spend a much higher percentage of their income

Another disturbing situation in the gambling community is the changing

percentage of women and young people who are becoming problem gamblers At

this time gambling is called "the fastest-growing teenage

addiction, with the

rate of pathological gambling among high-school and college-age youth about

twice that of adults." In Atlantic City, the lure of gambling is

so strong that

over thirty thousand underage people are either thrown out, or stopped from

entering the casino.6

Lobbyists for the gambling industry have made exorbitant claims about

the benefits that states will receive from the legalization of gambling Among

the many claims made by lobbyists are the increase in jobs,

millions in revenue

from gambling taxes, and an overall better economy On the

surface these

statements seem beneficial But underneath lies a misconstrued group of

half-truths that support the gambling industry This is only because the studies

that came up with these findings were funded entirely by

companies that have

interests in promoting gambling.7

There is a consistency in most of the stories the

lobbyists for the

gambling industry They usually involve the myth that says that big spenders

will spend money on local businesses and therefore boost the economy This

myth is false In fact, most local economies are actually hurt

by the

existence of a casino This is due to the actuality that the majority of the

people to go to casinos are the people form the surrounding area Instead of

spending their expendable money in local stores on clothing or appliances, they

gamble it away So what the casino is really doing is recycling the money of

the city and filtering out its profits It is like running an engine to power a

generator, to in turn power the engine; eventually it will run out

The reason such gambling Meccas as Las Vegas and Atlantic City are so

successful is because they are tourist attractions "The casino explosion

elsewhere has helped , by simply whetting the appetite of a whole new generation

of gamblers to try Las Vegas"8

The gambling industry has also taken advantage of

people's indecision

They do this by stating that there is much potential demand for gambling, and

without acting on it, casinos in neighboring communities and Indian

reservations will open and take business away from them They claim that

casinos in nearby cities are presently reaping the benefits from

a gambling

based economy Indecisive communities are told that by not

acting, they are in

fact losing money Money that could be used to finance schools,

police, and

city services So by forcing voters to make a quick decision, they are actually

forcing them to open Pandora's box

There are two general ways in which the gambling industry encourages

crime The fact that gambling leads to crime has even been

measured In 1994

the national crime rate fell two percent, while in the thirty-one places that

got new casinos the year before, saw a 7.7 percent increase in crime.9

The people that commit these crimes are not usually

mobsters "People

who engage in crime to support their compulsive gambling behavior generally have

no prior record of criminal behavior."10 Governments are

creating environments

where normal people, without criminal backgrounds, are being lured into

activities that could lead them to commit serious crimes The average

compulsive gambler who resorts to crime to support his or her habit is someone

with a good job, better than average intelligence, and had stable relationships

With state governments sending the subtle message of

"gambling is OK",

the public lowers its defenses against it According to a

national survey

conducted by Harrah, a large casino company, "51 percent of American adults

believe "casino entertainment is acceptable for everyone."

Another 35 percent

say that it is "acceptable for others but not for me"11

Some five percent of gamblers are compulsive, and to support their habit,

some of these gamblers turn to crime According to a 1992

report by the

Minnesota state planning agency, about sixty percent of all

pathological

gamblers engage in crime to support their habit Another 10 percent, go to jail

or are on probation.12 Different crimes are committed by

different ages of

gamblers Adults tend toward white collar crimes like writing bad checks, while

teenagers are more prone to steal from their parents

The second way gambling effects crime is by attracting organized crime

Organized crime is probably not as prevalent on the surface of the gambling

industry as it was in the forties, but it is still there One

of the

claims made by gambling promoters, is that legal gambling shifts illegal

gambling dollars into public fund But, organized crime, by offering better

odds and nontaxable payouts, has remained an active supplier of gambling

products with its own niche in the market The illegal gambling market is so

enormous that its profits each year, surpass that of the top 100 American

corporations combined.13 This includes IBM, all the automotive industries, and

many more

To help gamblers pay for these billions lost, organized crime sets up

loan sharks These loan sharks together are a ten billion dollar

a year

business , with ninety percent of the earrings coming from

gamblers.14

Casinos have been the financial savior of many Native American tribes in

the past decade Taking what they thought as their sovereign rights, which

exempted them from the laws of the states, tribes began putting card rooms and

bingo halls in their reservations Before long many people were coming by the

busload to play

Many tribes such as the Mashantucket Pequots, who are only 350 in number,

began to seriously cash in on these casinos The Pequots own the largest and

most profitable casino in the western world, with an estimate income of 2.6

billion dollars.15

The incoming money from the casinos helps with the living conditions of

the tribe The members see huge benefits such as better health care, subsidized

mortgages, scholarships, and of course jobs With such benefits, there is bound

to be some people who would like to be members of the tribe People come to the

tribe with forged documents in an attempt to become Indian but

"you just can't

leap over and become an instant Indian" says Rick Hill of the National Indian

Gaming Association.16

However, in the long run, tribal casinos may not be a sustained source

of economic benefit In the future, Tribal casinos will face stiffer

competition from the non-indian gambling industry, as well as from more tribal

casinos "The Indian people can't have things too long before the white man

begins coveting them.17

People only have a certain amount of discretionary money This is the

extra money that they have to spend on items other than their monthly bills and

necessities When casinos are introduced into an economy, it tends to

"Cannibalize" consumer dollars that wound go to other local

businesses If this

money was instead diverted to the local economy, it would not only strengthen

the local businesses, but it would greatly diminish the costs of caring for

compulsive gamblers

In 1994, The Illinois Economic and Fiscal Commission reported on five

locations who received new gambling operations They found that

"no community

demonstrated any real identifiable increase in general

merchandise sales In

specific locations there were actually indications of losses."18 According to

one local in Joliet, the behavior of the gambling crowd consists

of this: "they

on the boat, get off the boat, get in the car and drive home."19

Not only do casinos divert money away from legitimate businesses, but

they also steal it from other forms of gambling The public has only so much

money to spend solely on entertainment Horse and dog racing have competed

against Casinos and suffered in communities where they have been implemented

One of the single hardest hit businesses by the gambling industry is the

restaurants around the casinos Casinos offer an enormous

amount of cheap food

at the casinos to attempt to keep people inside Many casinos have such

specials as "Women eat free at 6:00" to cover the slower times

of the day The

losers are the neighborhood restaurants, many of whom soon go out

of business

In Atlantic city, the number of restaurants dropped from 243 to

146 between 1977

and 1987.20

As convenience gambling increases, not only do local businesses loose

consumer dollars, but governments loose the sales taxes they would have received

if citizens would have made these purchases All of this adds to the drain on

local government

Probably the most devastating consequences of the

gambling industry are

the hidden social costs imposed on the gamblers and on their families Gambling

is an addicting habit which should be controlled, but for the most part is not

Perhaps this is because widespread legalization of gambling is such a relatively

new phenomenon that the long term effects have not been totally seen

The vast majority of citizens do not have a problem with gaming, but

problem can be acquired A study in Iowa showed that in 1989, only 1.7 percent

of residents had a history of compulsive gambling In 1995, four years after

Iowa became the first state to admit riverboat gambling, the number of

compulsive gamblers had jumped to 5.4 percent.21 This may be that some people

had a tendency toward compulsive gambling but until it came to their community

they did not have an opportunity to act upon this trait It seems that when

these people with inclination towards the addiction are allowed

to gamble, their

gambling problem comes to the surface

Compulsive gamblers will bet until nothing is left:

savings, family

assets, personal belongings-anything of value that may be pawned, sold, or

borrowed against They will borrow from co-workers, credit

unions, family, and

friends, but will rarely admit that it is for gambling They may take personal

loans and possibly drive themselves into bankruptcy A good example of this

is that in the past two years since gambling began in South

Dakota, the state

has experienced significant increases in chapter seven

bankruptcies, and small

claims filings.22

Personal debt is by far not the only problem for

compulsive gamblers

In the same two years that bankruptcy increased in South Dakota, the number of

divorces increased nearly six percent, a jump of nearly 500

percent over the 1

percent yearly increase in the three years preceding the

introduction of about

80 casinos in the small town of Deadwood, and of thousands of electronic

gambling machines throughout the state.23 Gambling often leads

to other

destructive behavior Compulsive gamblers also have a much higher rate of auto

accidents Some people attribute many of these accidents to suicide attempts,

another costly behavior of problem gamblers On average,

compulsive gamblers

have suicide rates that are five to ten times higher than the rest of the

population To add to the victim list are the people who get hit by the cars

of gamblers Many problem gamblers have driven themselves so far into debt that

they do not have any auto insurance to pay for the damage that they have done

Child abuse and neglect are high among the crimes that compulsive

gamblers commit While parents are in the casinos, their

children are in the

car parked outside With numerous gamblers turning to alcohol

to try to ease

their pain, the number of child abuse cases goes upas well

There are many economic costs of compulsive gamblers as well By

combining costs produced by problem gamblers such as fraud,

embezzlement, unpaid

debts, bankruptcies, and increases in criminal justice expenses, large sums of

money are found the cost of legalized gambling In fact, some estimated to be

between twenty and thirty thousand dollars for each gambler, with some estimates

that go as high as 52 thousand These figures when multiplied by the number of

problem gamblers in a large state such as California, the total jumps to nearly

900 million dollars.24

It is a fact that the economic status of a gambler, usually determines

the psychological meaning of gaming for him or her "The higher

one's income ,

the more one will tend to see gambling as entertainment or as a way to socialize

with other people Conversely, the lower one's income, the more gambling tends

to be seen as an investment"25 With the poor who cannot afford such

investments as the stock market or real estate, gambling is meant to be less

as play and more as a sincere chance to transform their lives for the better

While the poor do not spend much more than gambling than middle income families,

they do spend a much higher percentage of their income

Another disturbing situation in the gambling community is the changing

percentage of women and young people who are becoming problem gamblers At

this time gambling is called "the fastest-growing teenage

addiction, with the

rate of pathological gambling among high-school and college-age youth about

twice that of adults." In Atlantic City, the lure of gambling is

so strong that

over thirty thousand underage people are either thrown out, or stopped from

entering the casino.26

A few years ago, the costs of counseling problem gamblers was relatively

low This was because relatively few states allotted much money for the

treatment of them With the number of compulsive gamblers

increasing, the money

for the treatment of gamblers will increase At one time, most health insurance

companies viewed compulsive gambling as a moral problem, and refused to pay for

treatment As the number of gamblers grow with the promotion of more state

promoted gambling enterprises, there is likely to be even more lobbying pressure

for increased government and insurance money for treatment and research This

will cumulatively increase the money that taxpayers will have to pay

After thorough examination of the gambling industry, we find that it is

not in the best interest of anyone for numerous reasons For starters, it is

not good for the individual because the legalization of gambling

is closely

related with the increase of many compulsive gamblers It is also unfavorable

for the individual, because it will lead a person who would never commit a crime

on their own, to steal to finance their habit

Gambling is also not very prudent for the families of gamblers Many

gamblers are also alcoholics who would beat their spouse and neglect or abuse

their children The community that the casino resides in is also hurt Money

that gambling was supposed to come, never came And instead of tourists coming

in to gamble the majority of gamblers came from the town itself Money that

could have been spent on goods from local stores was gambled away

in the casinos

Finally the state and local governments lose on this deal Compulsive

gamblers cost the state an enormous amount of money each year, and with the

number of problem gamblers growing with the casinos, this is a problem that will

not go away

It is probably put best in the quote "once gambling

starts, it does not

slow down and there can be no standing in it's place for those who would stop

it's spread"27

Bibliography

Abt, Vicki, James F Smith, and Eugene Martin Christiansen, The Business of Risk,

Commercial Gambling in Mainstream America, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence,

(1986)

Annin, Peter, "Looking for a Peice of the Action," Newsweek (June

13, 1994), p

44

Eichenwald, Kurt, "Fool's Gold in American Gambling," Newsweek (March 21, 1993)

p.33

Goodman, Robert, The Luck Business, The Devastating Consequences and Broken

Promises of America's Gambling Explosion, Free Press, (1995) Hirshey, Gerri, "Gambling Nation," The New York Times Magazine (July 17, 1994)

p.36

Lester, David, Gambling Today, Thomas, (1989)

Popkin, James, "America's Gambling Craze," U.S News and World Report (March 14,

1994), p.42

Sasuly, Richard, Bookies and Bettors, 200 years of Gambling, Holt, Rinehart and

Winston, New York (1987)

Shapiro, Joseph P., "America's Gambling Fever," U.S News and World Report

(January 15, 1996), p.52

Solotaroff, Ivan, "The Book on Gambling," Esquire (September 1995), p.159

Weinstein, David and Lillian Deitch, The Impact of Legalized Gambling: The

Socioeconomic Consequences and Off-Track Betting, Praeger, New York (1991)

Winston, Stewart, Harriet Harris, Nation of Gamblers: America's

Billion-Dollar-A-Day Habit, Prentice-Hall, (1984)

Endnotes

1 Shapiro, Joseph P., "America's Gambling Fever," U.S News and World Report

(January 15, 1996), p.57

2 Winston, Stewart, Harriet Harris, Nation of Gamblers:

America's

Billion-Dollar-A-Day Habit, Prentice-Hall, (1984) p.54

3 Popkin, James, "America's Gambling Craze," U.S News and World Report

(March 14, 1994), p.48

4 Popkin, James, "America's Gambling Craze," U.S News and World Report

(March 14, 1994), p.49

5 Lester, David, Gambling Today, Thomas, (1989) p.37

6 Solotaroff, Ivan, "The Book on Gambling," Esquire (September 1995),

p.162

7 Goodman, Robert, The Luck Business, The Devastating

Consequences and

Broken Promises of America's Gambling Explosion, Free Press, (1995) p.39

8 Shapiro, Joseph P., "America's Gambling Fever," U.S News and World

Report (January 15, 1996), p.58

9 Goodman, Robert, The Luck Business, The Devastating

Consequences and

Broken Promises of America's Gambling Explosion, Free Press, (1995) p.73

10 Abt, Vicki, James F Smith, and Eugene Martin Christiansen, The Business

of Risk, Commercial Gambling in Mainstream America, University Press of

Kansas, Lawrence, (1986) p.97

11 Hirshey, Gerri, "Gambling Nation," The New York Times

Magazine (July 17,

1994) p.36

12 Shapiro, Joseph P., "America's Gambling Fever," U.S News and World

Report (January 15, 1996), p.60

13 Winston, Stewart, Harriet Harris, Nation of Gamblers:

America's

Billion-Dollar-A-Day Habit, Prentice-Hall, (1984) p.42

14 Winston, Stewart, Harriet Harris, Nation of Gamblers:

America's

Billion-Dollar-A-Day Habit, Prentice-Hall, (1984) p.57