This report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia concludes that the local benefits of casinos would be outweighed by costs such as increases in pathological gambling, crime and personal bankruptcy.
Focus
Prominent Independent Study Shows Casinos Have Made Native American Tribes Poorer
For more than 25 years, the casino lobby has told the American people that casinos are the engine to help Native American tribes prosper. Now The Economist, the world’s leading international magazine, spotlights how casinos have actually made tribal members poorer, pointing to a new study in the American Indian Law Journal showing that growing tribal gambling revenues can make poverty worse. The study looks at two dozen tribes in the Pacific Northwest between 2000 and 2010. During that time, casinos owned by those tribes doubled their total annual take in real terms, to $2.7 billion. Yet the tribes’ mean poverty rate rose from 25% to 29%. Some tribes did worse: among the Siletz poverty jumped from 21.1% to 37.8%. Below is both the story from The Economist and the study from the American Indian Law Journal.
Oregon launched an aggressive advertising campaign to promote the Lottery’s highly-addictive electronic gambling machines
This excellent blog post from The Tax Foundation highlights how the state of Oregon, after passing a smoking ban in bars and restaurants to restrict a dangerous activity, launched an aggressive advertising campaign to promote the Lottery’s highly-addictive electronic gambling machines to make up for the anticipated loss of revenue caused by the smoking ban.
The Tax Foundation – Reading Between the Lines of Oregon’s Video Lottery Terminals
The New York Times Magazine Exposes Modern Slot Machines
This must-read New York Times Magazine cover story by Gary Rivlin exposes the slot machine business as predatory and deceptive.
Australian Government Study Reveals the Spectacular Failure of Government-Sanctioned Gambling
This report from the Productivity Commission of Australia (the Australian Government’s independent research and advisory body) provides an in-depth analysis of the effects of the predatory gambling industry on the nation. Gambling, and specifically “pokies” or video slot machines, became pervasive across almost the entire Australian nation by 1995.
Community backlash against slot machines in Switzerland caused the nation to ban slot machines outside of casinos in 2005. Widespread concerns in Russia about gamblers losing their life savings and becoming destitute caused that country to ban all gambling, other than in four highly remote regions. Due to increased problem gambling, Norway banned all video slot machines in 2007 and Internet gambling in 2009. The Norwegian gambling authority is implementing “less aggressive” (slower play, low maximum loss rates) gambling machines in smaller numbers than the banned slots.
The major conclusions from the Australian report are:
* Gambling now costs Australian society about $4.5 billion dollars per year, the bulk of costs deriving from video slot machines. These costs exceed benefits when “excess” losses by problem gamblers is included. Cost per year per adult translates to $210. $1 U.S. dollar = $1.08 in Australian dollars as of Oct 23, 2009.
* 42 to 75 percent of total machine losses are paid by moderate and high risk problem gamblers.
* Gambling machines, as contrasted to other forms of gambling such as lottery or tables games account for around 75–80 percent of ‘problem gamblers’ and are found to pose significant problems for ordinary consumers.
* About 2.5 percent of Australian adults are now problem gamblers.
* 8 to 15 percent of Australian problem gamblers seek treatment. “Internationally, around 6-15 per cent of people experiencing problems with gambling are reported to seek help from problem gambling services…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.’
* Help services for problem gamblers using them have worked well overall, but they relate to people who have already developed major problems and are thus not a substitute for preventative measures.
* The potential for significant harm from some types of gambling is what distinguishes gambling from most other enjoyable recreational activities — and underlines the communities’ ambivalence towards it. While many Australians gamble, they remain skeptical about the overall community benefits. For instance, one survey estimated that around 80 percent of Victorian adults considered that gambling had done more harm than good (with little difference between the views of gamblers and non-gamblers). Looking at all Australian surveys, roughly 80 percent of the public wants to see video slot machines removed or their numbers reduced.
* Many people who do not fit the strict criteria for problem gambling are found to experience significant harms. For example, of those people who said that gambling had affected their job performance, some 60 percent were not categorized as ‘problem gamblers.’
* 39 percent of high risk problem gamblers suffered adverse effects on workplace performance.
* Had there been full knowledge at the time about the harmful effects of substantially increasing accessibility to gaming machines in the 1990s, a different model of liberalization, with less widespread accessibility, may well have been seen as appropriate. Western Australia did not follow the approach of other jurisdictions and appears to have far fewer gambling problems.
* The effect of widespread gambling machine availability on the economy can be seen in Australia, where gambling losses reached 3.1 percent of household consumption, 6.3 percent in Northern Australia.
* Beyond the powerful example provided by the early liberalization experiences of Australia, there is a broad range of evidence suggesting a link between proximity and harm.
* 60 percent of Australian teens gamble on video slot machines by the time they are 18 years of age. Over 60 percent of Aussie teens have gambled in some form before they reached 18 years.
* Increased knowledge of gambling in children may have the unintended consequence of intensifying harmful behavior, a risk that should be considered in the design (or even in considering the introduction) of school-based programs. Nevertheless, several insights emerge from the drug, alcohol and driver education literature that may increase the effectiveness of any school-based gambling education programs and potentially reduce the risks of adverse behavioral responses: a school-based education program may be more effective if accompanied by a corresponding change in societal attitudes and a media campaign. For instance, the relatively greater success of school-based tobacco programs (compared with alcohol) is attributed to the fact that these were accompanied by consistent anti–smoking messages in the general media and to the emergence of a strong anti–smoking social movement.
* Australian gamblers are estimated to lose A$790 million per year, about 4 percent of the size of legal gambling, in illegal online gambling and Internet casinos.
* The report found that slot machines are between 6 and 18 times more risky than lotteries
* Around 50 per cent of gaming machine gamblers have false beliefs about how gaming machines work, which pose risks to them…’Faulty cognition’ about slot machine design is strongly associated with problem gambling. 33 percent of high-risk problem gamblers, 20 percent of moderate risk, and 5 percent of recreational gamblers believe that a gambler is more likely to win on a slot machine after losing many times in a row. Some groups of consumers — such as people with intellectual or mental health disabilities, poor English skills, and those who are emotionally fragile (say due to grief) — may be particularly vulnerable to problems when gambling.
Casinos Failed to Bring Prosperity to Connecticut
Despite developing two of the largest casinos on the planet in the 1990s, the state of Connecticut is in dire fiscal shape. The New York Times piece below states that “Connecticut’s finances are among the most troubled in the nation: it is last or close to last in financing pension obligations and retaining reserves for emergencies, and near the top in per-capita debt…Moody’s lowered its outlook for the state’s bond rating to negative from stable.” This is just another example that casinos fail to provide the revenue promised by lobbyists of the predatory gambling trade. And what about jobs? The state has “an abysmal level of job creation and economic growth that has left the state with fewer workers employed now than in 1987.”
Slot Machines Near Misses Are Perfectly Tuned to Stoke the Addiction
The Discover Magazine blog helps explain the allure of slot machines and the difficulty that some gamblers have in walking away by highlighting that, to a gambler’s brain, a near miss provides almost the same high as a win.
Slot Machines Near Misses Are Perfectly Tuned to Stoke the Addiction
Fact Sheet on Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006
Stop Predatory Gambling amicus brief in Supreme Court case Murphy vs NCAA
To help the Supreme Court better understand the stakes of this critical case, Stop Predatory Gambling assembled a broad and diverse coalition to file an amicus brief demonstrating the law’s constitutionality and highlighting how state-sanctioned gambling has been a spectacular failure. The brief explains how state-sanctioned gambling uses unfair and deceptive marketing practices to target and prey on the financially desperate and the addicted; reduces opportunity for millions of American families to improve their economic standing; and forces even those citizens who rarely or never gamble to foot the bill for the enormous social costs and state budget problems it leaves behind.
There are several co-signers that joined with Stop Predatory Gambling. They include national advocacy groups that focus on issues ranging from economic justice to public health, such as The Center for Popular Democracy, United for a Fair Economy and The Public Health Advocacy Institute, along with some of the nation’s largest and most prominent Christian and Muslim religious groups.
DOWNLOAD THE BRIEF: 2017 SUBMITTED BRIEF 16-476, -477 bsac SPG
80% of Lottery Profits Come From 10% of the Players
According the New York Times: “States are also trying to bolster the number of ‘core’ players, according to interviews with lottery officials in several states. Such players typically represent only 10 percent to 15 percent of all players but account for 80 percent of sales, according to Independent Lottery Research, which does research and marketing for state lotteries.”