Stop Predatory Gambling
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Prove that slot machines and casinos are safe to be promoted to the public
by Les
Below is testimony I submitted at yesterday’s casino hearing in Massachusetts:
Good morning, my name is Les Bernal and I’m the Executive Director of Stop Predatory Gambling, a national organization based in Washington DC, and our mission is to end the failed government program of predatory gambling.
Two years ago, a handful of McDonalds customers got sick in an outbreak of salmonella poisoning because of some problem tomatoes. But even though a tiny number of people were hurt, McDonalds stopped serving sliced tomatoes everywhere in the country. It was a major national story.
Today before you are proposals to legalize casinos that no one denies will make tens of thousands of your constituents very sick in a way that will reduce many of their lives to nothing.
The casinos say it is not the slot machine or their unrivaled predatory marketing practices – they say the gambler is the problem. But is there anyone who called those McDonald’s patrons who got sick “problem eaters?”
A Philadelphia newspaper recently quoted the general manager of Harrah’s Casino in Chester, PA, which is the same casino business who is a financial partner with Suffolk Downs, as saying the customers in his database visited an average of almost five times a week. The president of Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem, PA admitted to similar numbers. And most of them are coming from within twenty miles.
Five times a week from within a 20 mile radius! How many of your constituents are presently driving to Mohegan Sun, Foxwoods and Twin River five times a week, more than 250 times a year?
The answer is virtually no one.
Right now in Illinois, there are more people on the state’s self-exclusion list – people who have publicly acknowledged they are gambling addicts, most of whom have had their lives turned upside down -than there are people who work at the casinos. (almost 8000 on self-exclusion list…there are 6826 casino jobs. Source: IL Gaming Board 2010 report)
This past January, 60 Minutes broadcast its investigation into slot machines. The show was based on the research of MIT’s Dr. Natasha Schull who has testified here in this building four times.
Dr. Schull said that a slot machine is designed to be so effective at extracting money from people that it is “a product that approaches every player as a potential addict.”
If 60 Minutes, the top-rated news program in America, thought Dr. Schull’s research into the highly addictive and predatory design of
slot machines was important enough to the public interest to highlight it on national television in prime time, how can anyone on this
committee and in the media discuss or write about this issue any further without first proving that slot machines and casinos are safe
to be promoted to the public?
McDonalds is a good analogy
I think the McDonalds analogy is fitting for this issue. Government is knowingly promoting something that is hurting people….what private entity would be allowed to do that?
Also, I was unaware about the Illinois and PA stats you reference. Most people have no idea how severe it has become.
Thanks, Les
Slot-machine gambling expansion solves the deficit?
March Madness – Slot-machine gambling expansion in Lakewood, Washington
The hysteria (“lack of self-control”) surrounding the NCAA basketball championships takes on new meaning this mad month of March with the expected forecast due out of the state capital today, March 17, of a $500 million drop in tax revenue. As scintillating as a back-door lob followed by a windmill-one-arm-throw-down, a slam-dunk proposal sure-to-score among legislators is gambling expansion via slot machines in our state.
Dolores Chiechi, Executive Director of the Recreational Gaming Association (RGA), says the new video-slot machine proposal her group is proposing would be “accommodated by casinos in Lakewood.”
http://www.theolympian.com/2011/03/16/1581888/gaming-groups-dangle-380m-video.html#ixzz1Gs2NW0ux
Of course Pierce County and Tacoma, Washington have bans on the casinos, but gambling facilities in Lakewood and in similar venues across Washington would – given Lakewood’s recent history – no doubt welcome these long-sought slots to “level playing field” with the tribal casinos – the only locations currently where such one-armed bandits are allowed to rob customers.
The slot-expansion proposal is “much less drastic” (than the failed attempt in 2003 that would have placed 19,000 slots across the state) reports Brad Shannon, political editor at The Olympian, in that only 7,875 slot machines are anticipated – 125 for each of the 63 non-tribal casinos in the state, according to Chiechi’s glowing estimate. In Lakewood, throw in the rerun of “Happy Days” casino, that equates to 625 slots and thus a return to the so-called ‘good ole days’ when Lakewood claimed dubious bragging rights as the Number One Seeded and Crowned Champion “non-tribal gambling capital” for the entire State of Washington.
House Republican Leader Richard DeBolt is one legislator that sees, albeit near-sightedly, dollar signs in the slot proposal. Akin to a wide-eyed and wide-open low-post player beneath the bucket, frantically waving for the ball in the waning seconds of the game, DeBolt declared he “was open to the RGA proposal and said it might not require a supermajority vote in the Legislature to pass, because it doesn’t expand gambling by adding venues.”
Saying “it doesn’t expand gambling by adding venues” is like receiving a pass while having one foot on the end line. It’s a turn-over in B-Ball, and DeBolt’s argument is flawed to even the most far-sighted referee.
Twice in the last three years Lakewood led the parade of the Association of Washington Cities (AWC) to the State Legislature and uttered before the House Labor and Commerce Committee the very same banalities now blathered by DeBolt. HB 2162 (2009), and HB 2873 (2010), were both so-called ‘gambling control’ bills. Neither made it out of committee and a ‘third-time’s-the-charm’ gambit by the AWC never even made it to committee in 2011, let alone out of it.
The reason is, and certainly DeBolt should know because the replay screen is clear to everyone else watching the game, there is no such thing as the ‘control’ of gambling. To offer otherwise is worse than an official who fails to call ‘foul’ of a player tackling an opponent on a breakaway basket. Let alone failing to declare it intentional.
“It doesn’t expand gambling by adding venues” is like looking the other way and pretending not to have seen the obvious. This proposal does in fact expand gambling by adding slots. It is no different than any other ad nauseum gambling expansion bill proposed over the last eight years by the RGA. Why not just be honest and call it for what it is? Instead of putting a new face on it – the Recreational Gaming Association – why is it not called ‘gambling’? Why pretend?
That Cheichi and her team would full-court press the legislature with this late-stage run that pretends to cut the budget deficit with a string of unanswered points is to let somebody who shouldn’t even be in the game to hang around until the end. It can spell trouble down the stretch.
Bad economic situations breed bad budget decisions and if there is ever a time a team needs to show its character it’s then that it’s needed – and demonstrated – most.
It’s gut-check time for Washington’s legislators.
Slots [or pokies as we call them in Australia
One only needs to look at the havoc wreaked by pokies in Australia. Here the gambling lobbyists along with their media supporters are squealing like stuffed pigs because the Australian Federal Government has dared to reduce the impact of the misery caused by slots. There is at least one Federal member of parliament Andrew Wilke who has the courage to challenge the influence of slot machine lobbyists. I suggest you google him and you will be amazed at whats happening in Australia with slots problem – a lesson the USA could well learn from. Please see my earlier comments.
SLOTS/SELF EXCLUSION
I GO TO TWIN RIVER CASIONO THREE TIMES A WEEK. I AM HOOKED ON A GAME -MR WOO. IT HAS SEVERAL TYPES OF BONUS PLAY.IT PAYS FREQUENTLY WHEN
IT’S ON A ROLL. JACKPOTS ARE $.200-$400. IT IS A FUN AND ADDICTING GAME.
ANYWAY I CAN’T STOP GOING TO THE CASINO. I EMAILED BACK AND FOURTH WITH THE SECURITY CAPTAIIN ABOUT SELF EX CLUSION. THEY TELL YOU IT ONLY TAKES 10 MINUTES AND YOU JUST HAVE TO FILL OUT A SHORT FORM. THEY SAY DON’T BE EMBARRASED AS MANY PEOPLE DO IT.WHEN YOU GO TO THE SECURITY GUARD AND TELL THEM YOU WANT TO SELF EXCLUDE YOURSELF,THEY GIVE YOU THE FORM TO SIGN AND GO INTO ANOTHER ROOM UNTIL YOU ARE FINISHED.THEY DON’T ASK YOU IF YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE SIGNING. AFTER YOU SIGN IT THEY ESCOURT YOU OUT AND SAY IF YOU RETURN YOU WILL BE ARRESTED BY THE STATE POLICE. THEY DID GIVE ME A PAPER WITH GA PHONE NUMBER. AND YOU ARE ON YOUR WAY. NO COMPASSION
Subject
I GO TO TWIN RIVER CASIONO THREE TIMES A WEEK. I AM HOOKED ON A GAME -MR WOO. IT HAS SEVERAL TYPES OF BONUS PLAY.IT PAYS FREQUENTLY WHEN
IT’S ON A ROLL. JACKPOTS ARE $.200-$400. IT IS A FUN AND ADDICTING GAME.
ANYWAY I CAN’T STOP GOING TO THE CASINO. I EMAILED BACK AND FOURTH WITH THE SECURITY CAPTAIIN ABOUT SELF EX CLUSION. THEY TELL YOU IT ONLY TAKES 10 MINUTES AND YOU JUST HAVE TO FILL OUT A SHORT FORM. THEY SAY DON’T BE EMBARRASED AS MANY PEOPLE DO IT.WHEN YOU GO TO THE SECURITY GUARD AND TELL THEM YOU WANT TO SELF EXCLUDE YOURSELF,THEY GIVE YOU THE FORM TO SIGN AND GO INTO ANOTHER ROOM UNTIL YOU ARE FINISHED.THEY DON’T ASK YOU IF YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE SIGNING. AFTER YOU SIGN IT THEY ESCOURT YOU OUT AND SAY IF YOU RETURN YOU WILL BE ARRESTED BY THE STATE POLICE. THEY DID GIVE ME A PAPER WITH GA PHONE NUMBER. AND YOU ARE ON YOUR WAY. NO COMPASSION
Excellent Article....plus....The Joke of Self Exclusion!
Our public health system is under-pinned by the goal of prevention of harmful health issues. Use of the Precautionary Principle when required…and common sense…should be the order of the day in the absence of proof, as this excellent article highlights. The gambling industry offers no proof of its product safety…yet the government demands ‘evidence-based research’ to disprove…what exactly? We are dealing with a much unknown quantity here and the common sense, public health approach would advise caution / product withdrawal! How long will our governments allow this precautionary approach towards EGM’s to be ignored?
Plus…Self Exclusion is known not to work effectively. Too few people are willing to expose their gambling problems, to ask for it as a solution. Too often the ban may be by-passed anyhow because venue security is lax. If a gambling consumer uses more than one venue…problems of security compound.
The obvious solution would be to have a licence card for every gambler as we know…but no that would be too hard and expensive apparently. The gambling industry dislikes having any market 100% identified…because deflections, excuses become less possible when a problem is 100% defined and measured.
Meanwhile court cases are decided in favor of the gambling industry. It is claimed that a consumer could have used self – exclusion…so he was not harmed by the gambling environment and its products. Self Exclusion has become a convenient legal cop out. Its obvious deficiencies have been ignored for the sake of expediency. No consumer should be expected to use a system that is flawed. Protection from self harm should not be presumed as an option for consumers, when the protection offered, is itself ineffective, most of the time.