Gambling Exacts High Cost on Kids
By Tom Osborne
Omaha
World Herald
9/18/2002
The writer, a Republican, represents Nebraska's
3rd District in the House of Representatives.
WASHINGTON -- The public debate
over increased gambling in Nebraska has centered around one central
theme: whether video gambling and casinos would provide financial
benefit to Nebraskans by increasing state revenues and reducing taxes.
Though the future of the most recent gambling initiative remains in
question, this debate resurfaces time and again. While I firmly believe
that the premise of lower taxes is false, I would like to focus on an
issue largely ignored in this debate: the effects of gambling on our
most vulnerable and innocent citizens - our children.
Gambling is bad for individuals - young, old, wealthy or impoverished.
Video gambling triggers addiction. The fixation on the screen while
gambling can cause the body to release hormones identical to those
caused by cocaine and speed use. The more legalized gambling available,
the more addictive behavior it triggers. In 1989, 1.7 percent of Iowa's
adults were gambling addicts. After the legalization of riverboat
casinos, that number more than tripled to 5.4 percent.
A 1994 study reported that pathological gamblers spent from $1,000 to
$5,000 a month on gambling. Ninety percent used family savings to
finance their gambling - funds that otherwise would have been used to
finance children's education, put food on the table or stay out of
poverty.
The state-sponsored fantasy that the way to wealth and happiness is
through a game of chance rather than hard work and dedication targets
the poor, uneducated and the young - individuals earning less than
$10,000 a year spend more on convenience gambling than any other income
group - and has been responsible in whole or in part for 2 million
divorces in recent years.
The desperate and dangerous cycle created by gambling addiction even
leads one in five people who become addicted to gambling - of the more
than 15 million Americans struggling with gambling problems - to
attempt suicide. Children suffer a triple loss: the loss of a parent,
the loss of a role model and the loss of a work ethic to the belief
that gambling, not diligent work or personal savings, is the key to
financial security.
Local gambling operations also target and trap young people with such
tactics as cartoon-character-themed machines aimed at children. As many
as 1.1 million adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 are
pathological gamblers - a far higher percentage than adults. Families
and children often frequent neighborhood gambling establishments where
adults play slot machines with their children seated immediately behind
them.
Gambling is bad for local economies. Convenience gambling cannibalizes
local businesses, stunting economic development and diversification.
One hundred dollars spent in a slot machine is $100 not spent in a
local restaurant or store. In addition, add the mounting societal costs
of gambling.
Pathological and problem gambling
doubles within 50 miles of a casino,
and for every dollar produced by gambling for a local economy, three
dollars are lost to the economic and social costs of gambling. However,
you cannot put a price on a life or family shattered by gambling
addiction. Gambling is bad for Nebraska. Sure, a slot machine may pay
for itself in 100 days.
But, at what price?
http://www.familyfirst.org/gamblingcoalition/tomosborne_gambling.shtml
|