In 2010, the Lehigh Valley Research Consortium released a report showing that 48 percent of those below the poverty line in the Lehigh Valley intend to gamble at the Sands Casino in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. ”The casino ads always show young glamorous-looking people gambling,” said Michele Moser Deegan, a Muhlenberg College associate professor who directs the consortium. ”But when you go inside, you can see that it really is the working poor and middle class. This survey shows that.”
The Failure to Regulate the Gambling Business Effectively: Incentives for Perpetual Non-Compliance
Social and economic costs of legalized gambling, and the difficulty of its regulation are the subjects of this Southern Illinois University Law Review article by John Warren Kindt. The evidence shows that gambling causes addiction, bankruptcy, crime, and corruption in its surrounding communities. All of the social costs associated with those problems can add up, and there is shockingly little pressure on government or the predatory gambling business to do better.
Pathological Gambling and Alcohol Use Disorder
This study by Jon E. Grant, M.D., Matt G. Kushner, Ph.D., and Suck Won Kim, M.D. establishes a link between alcohol addiction and gambling addiction. Many casinos offer free alcohol because it increases the likelihood of people losing their self-control. The more people lose their self-control, the more money they lose gambling.
More Than 30% of Problem Gamblers Admitted to Stealing from the Workplace to Gamble or Pay Gambling Debts
R. Keith Schwer, William Thompson and Daryl Nakamuro compiled this fascinating study of problem and pathological gamblers in which they estimate the social costs to gambling’s host community, arriving at a conservative figure above $19,000 per problem gambler. Some of the detail is particularly compelling: when pathological gamblers run out of legitimate sources of money they consider illegal sources. Starting close at hand, they pass bad checks. The study found that 63.3% wrote such checks. They also look for money in the workplace. Also, 30.1% admitted to stealing from the workplace in order to gamble or pay gambling debts. This is about the same portion who stole from the workplace in other surveys: 31.7% in Wisconsin, 37.1% in South Carolina, and 40.7% in Connecticut. A majority, 50.6%, of the respondents indicated that they had stolen money or things and used it to gamble or to pay gambling-related debts.
Beyond the Limits of Recreation – Social Costs of Gambling in Southern Nevada
California Taxpayers Pay Even If They Don’t Play
Predatory gambling operators are fond of framing their scheme as a “voluntary tax.” Yet according to the California Attorney General’s 2006 study titled “Gambling in the Golden State”, problem and pathological gamblers cost California $1 billion per year, more than half what the state received in gambling revenues. Read the report below.
The economic growth fallacy of supporting casinos
Proponents of casinos will tell you to think of casinos and institutionalized gambling as economic development; the truth is, revenue from gambling funds government – not growth. Not one study unaffiliated with the American Gaming Association backs up the claim that casinos contribute to economic development.
In this column penned for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Larry Platt powerfully and effectively dismantles the specious argument peddled by the casino lobby across the nation. A must-read for all the nation’s citizens.
Why Only a Tiny Percentage of Predatory Gambling Victims Seek Help
Only about 6% of people experiencing problems with gambling are reported to seek help from problem gambling services, according to this study. People experiencing problems with their gambling often do not seek professional help until a ‘crisis’ occurs — financial ruin, relationship break down, court charges or attempted suicide — or when they hit ‘rock bottom. Another reason why problem gamblers are afraid to get help is because two of of three have done something illegal to obtain the money to feed their addiction.
Hope and Hard Luck: Poorest Counties Lead State in Per Capita Lottery Sales
This first-rate report by Sarah Ovaska of North Carolina Policy Watch details how the most impoverished counties in North Carolina spend the most money on the state lottery. The report below also includes a link to a county-by-county map detailing lottery sales.
Serious Gambling-Related Problems Have Emerged as an Epidemic Among America’s Youth
This report highlights how serious gambling-related problems have emerged as an epidemic among America’s youth. Today, at least one out of every five young people has a serious gambling-related problem, up from one out of every ten in 1988. The prevalence rate of gambling among the young is now 80%, almost double the rate (45%) it was in 1988. A summary of the report can be found below. It was done by Durand F. Jacobs, Ph.D., ABPP Clinical Professor of Medicine (Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences), Loma Linda University Medical School, California.