Stop Predatory Gambling

Take five minutes to help stop predatory slots

by spgadmin

Native American casinos have been a driving force behind the massive expansion of predatory gambling that has overwhelmed the U.S. over the last twenty years. It’s happened in large part because so-called “Class II” slot machines, often called “electronic bingo machines,” have allowed predatory gambling interests to willfully evade state gambling laws to expand their business scheme within a state.

By taking five minutes to email the sample letter below today, you can make a difference to stop this practice. At this moment, the National Indian Gaming Commission is reviewing technical standards for Class II gambling machines (this includes bingo machines.). The public is being given an opportunity to provide input and the public comment period ends this Friday, Feb. 11^th. I strongly urge you to make your voice heard.

The NIGC prefers citizens submit comments as an attachment by email to reg.review@nigc.gov Please include the name of the person making the submission, mailing address, telephone number and e-mail address. They ask the document be emailed as an attachment in either Microsoft Word or as an Adobe PDF format. If you want more details, you can visit here.

Thanks for making a difference. Here is the text of the sample attachment below:

To: National Indian Gaming Commission

Re: Public Comment Regarding Technical Standards for Class II Gambling Machines

Date: February 9, 2011

I am writing to ask the National Indian Gaming Commission to not only make a clear and unmistakable distinction between Class II and Class III tribal gambling machines, but most importantly, make its primary focus to prove these slot machines are safe.

As the recent 60 Minutes segment revealed, all forms of electronic gambling machines, regardless of whether they are Class II or Class III machines, have proven to be severely harmful for hundreds of thousands of Americans. Why are these machines still being promoted to the public without being proven they are safe?

In 2008 McDonald’s made national headlines when they stopped serving sliced tomatoes everywhere in the country after a handful of customers got sick in an outbreak of salmonella poisoning. Yet tribal casino interests are offering the public slot machines which no one denies are making hundreds of thousands of people sick.

The casinos say it is not the machine – the gambler is the problem. But is there anyone who called those McDonald’s patrons “problem eaters?”

In the words of Rhode Island Hospital’s Dr. Robert Breen who appeared on the 60 Minutes segment, “Given the right circumstances, almost anyone can get hooked on slots.”

Wiley Harwell, executive director of the Oklahoma Association for Problem and Compulsive Gambling and working in a state with a large number of Class II machines told The Tulsa World in 2010: “Slot machines produce a trancelike state. People lose track of time and space. Logic and reason shut down. The back of the brain lights up. They’re literally not cognizant that they are spending more than they should.”

Is there any member of Congress who voted for the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 or a staff member at the NIGC who believes the intent of IGRA was to get “almost anyone hooked on slots” and to put citizens “in a trancelike state” so they lose control of their spending?

There is no question Congress wanted a clear and major distinction between Class II and Class III gambling.  The less regulated Class II games were in that category because they were palpably more benign than the Class III forms of gambling. Having slightly different technological programming of the machines does not fulfill the intent of the legislators that crafted IGRA. Today, most slot machine users are hard-pressed to distinguish the experience of using a Class II slot machine and Class III slot machine.

If a machine looks like, sounds like, and feels like a slot machine in play, it should be categorized as a Class III gambling machine, regardless of whether or not the technology inside the machine pits player against player rather than player against a computer.

But the NIGC can eliminate the hairsplitting around Class II slots and Class III once and for all by first forcing casino interests and the makers of electronic gambling machines to prove the machines are safe. Because as 60 Minutes proved, today’s machines are not safe, no matter how the NIGC classifies them.