Is Quebec heading down the dangerous American gambling road?

By Jimmy Kalafatidis- printed in the Suburban

We need to redesign gambling in the province of Quebec so our society does not breed
generations of problem gamblers with incredibly high social costs as seen statistically in
the USA.

The American Gaming Association estimates more than $50 billion is now spent
annually on legal gambling in the United States. That's more than what is spent on
spectator sports, movies, recorded music, video games and theme parks combined.

When one looks at the problem gambling trends one has to worry. Today, research (using
American figures) indicates that as many as 7% of teenagers may be addicted to
gambling" (Lorenz, 1995).

At the other end of the spectrum Adult gambling addiction has increased from .77% of the
adult population (U.S. Commission on the Review of the National Policy Toward
Gambling, 1975) to as much as 11% in some states in 1993" (Lorenz, 1995).Pollsters
questioned Americans about their gambling habits and found that about equal proportions
of men and women have gambled. But the percentage of women who have ever gambled
rose 20 percent from 1994 to 1998.

Their has also been a correlation between an increase in gambling and an increase in
urban violence. Three years after the arrival of casinos, Atlantic City rose from fiftieth
to first in the nation among cities in per capita crime. Within five years of permitting
limited stakes casinos in Deadwood, South Dakota, serious crimes jumped 93%.
Mississippi's Gulf Coast welcomed casinos in August of 1992. After a year, bank
robberies had increased from one to 13, and armed robberies tripled. In Ledyard,
Connecticut, home of the nation's richest casino, rape, robbery, car theft, and larceny all
increased more than 400% in the first three years after Foxwoods opened. Is this what
our future holds for us in Quebec?

Domestic Abuse can also be linked. Spousal and child abuse and neglect often accompany
gambling. The Gulf Coast Women's Center in Biloxi, Mississippi, has averaged 400
additional crisis calls per month since the advent of casinos there. Central City, Colorado
reported a six-fold rise in child protection cases in the year after casinos arrived.
Jeffrey Bloomberg, former state's attorney for the Deadwood, South Dakota area, cited
a similar increase in his September 1994 congressional testimony and described how
children were being left in cars all night while their parents gambled. Nevada led the
nation in deaths of children attributable to abuse from 1979 to 1988, a period when
casino gambling was illegal everywhere else except in Atlantic City. In the USA 1996, a
middle-aged Joliet, Illinois., couple committed suicide together after the wife accumulated
$200,000 in casino debt. A year later, a 10-day-old baby died in South Carolina in a
sweltering car while his mother played video poker for seven hours.

The message, gambling is on the increase and is here to stay in North America, so how
can we control the gambling environment so we can lower our social costs?

Here are five simple suggestions to control gambling in Quebec, so we don't suffer the
same fate as the Americans, compiled from many commissions and studies.

One the Quebec government should immediately ban all advertising pertaining to
gambling, just like tobacco and alcohol advertising are forbidden so should gambling ads.
The purpose of advertising is to increase usage of a product or service and in this regard
would mean to get more people to play, get hooked or to get people who gamble to
increase their frequency in playing.

Two the governemt should increase the age for gambling from 18 to 21 years. The more
we discourage young adults from playing, the more the young adults can spend their
disposable income on more important things like, lets say Hmmm..... education.

Three prohibit the sale of alcohol in establishments where gambling is permitted, like the
casinos. Drinking as we all know impairs judgment and throwing gambling in the mix may
result in people throwing their life savings away at a roll of the dice, as well as jeopdising
their childrens welfare.

Four increase funding for gambling prevention and therapy to prevent future social
costs.

Five pass a law provincial allowing municipalities the right by referendum to allow or
disallow VLTs(mini casinos) in their areas. These referendums have taken place in many
municipalities all over North america. The local governemt and people closest to the
ground should have a say if they want these mini VLT casinos close to their homes. The
PQ and Jacques Parizeau took away that municipal right in 1994.

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