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Government-created gambling addicts are not equal citizens
by Les
In the news video below, WPRI recently spotlighted how more than HALF the revenues from government’s casino program comes from citizens who have been turned into gambling addicts- citizens just like Sandy Hall who appears in this story. She lost almost everything she had to an electronic gambling machine operated in partnership with government, “regulated” by government and her enormous gambling losses were simply considered part of government’s revenues.
We are told the public benefit of government’s gambling program is to “create jobs” but the results show it creates far more gambling addicts than jobs. According to the Illinois Gambling Board 2010 Annual Report, the number of people who have put themselves on a “self-exclusion” list to help them stay out of casinos because of gambling addiction – about 8,300 – is over 20% more than the number of people employed by the casinos – about 6,900.
In a nation where everyone is equal under the law, how can government continue to promote a failed policy where more than half the profit it collects is a direct result of treating hundreds of thousands of citizens like Sandy Hall as subhuman? Why are the lives of people like her considered worthless and not protected by our government?
I am glad the media is paying more attention to the fact that the majority of slots revenue comes from problem gamblers. Let’s hope they will continue to explore the issue in more depth in the future and try to get predatory gambling operators to defend this fact.