When was the last time you saw a Casino or lottery ad saying, "We have enormous operating expenses, including advertising, high CEO pay, lobbying & much more, and we still make an enormous profit! There's no way we could do that if we didn't rig the odds in our favor!"
Do you remember that ad?
Me neither.
How about the ad that said, "We make an enormous profit by targeting compulsive gamblers, even if we pretend not to; this leads to higher rates of poverty, homelessness, crime and even murder; however, since we spend an enormous amount of money buying ads from commercial media they're getting a cut of the loot, so they have an incentive not to report on the best research; and we also donate an enormous amount of money to political campaigns, so politicians have an incentive to promote gambling and look the other way at the social problems it causes!"
Do you remember that ad?
Na, I don't remember that one either.
There's an astronomical amount of research available about the negative impact of gambling, how it increases poverty crime and many more social problems; and there's plenty more research showing that these social problems feed on each other make them worse; but it's almost completely absent from traditional media where the vast majority of the public still get their news.
Since the media get a cut out of the loot, they have an incentive to bury the best research exposing this fraud and avoiding explaining basic fundamentals that expose organized gambling form the fraud that it is!
Niccolò Machiavelli would agree that this is an effective way to keep people poor, and since it also leads to increased violence it enables the media to pray on people emotions, often as part of a divide and rule tactic.
The vast majority of media on the gambling industry is almost certainly the ads or daily reporting of the lottery as entertainment making it seem like a way of life without reporting on enormous social problems causes by it, especially on television which is probably where most gambling addicts get their news. News papers are more likely to cover some of the negative impacts of gambling but even they minimize coverage of how it increases poverty often focusing on how it impacts the economy or creates jobs, often distorting the truth, by reporting on the income that it brings in without reporting on the social problems that it cause.
This includes the following article which provides a few subtle hints about how gambling is rigged but it distorts the truth making it seem less damaging than it is:
Latest casino numbers show tough month 12/17/2019
Plainridge Park Casino in Plainville brought in less revenue in November than it has in any full month since its June 2015 opening, and November was the second-worst revenue month on record for MGM Springfield, which opened in August 2018. Encore Boston Harbor, which opened June 2019, also had its second-worst revenue showing last month.
Encore reported $47.3 million in gross gaming revenue last month, $22.78 million from slot machines and another $24.52 from table games. Only October saw the Everett casino count less in monthly revenue, when it collected $45.8 million. Of the $286.9 million deposited into Encore’s slot machines last month, 92.06 percent was returned to players.
At MGM Springfield, casino operators counted $19.94 million in gross gaming revenue last month, beating only January 2019’s $19.7 million in terms of monthly revenue. Whereas Encore’s revenue is split somewhat evenly between table games and slots, a greater share of MGM’s revenue comes from slot machines. The casino took in $14.73 million — or about 74 percent of its monthly total — in slot revenue. The MGM slots paid out 91.88 percent of the $181.36 million that players deposited in November.
...... The slots in Plainville were the most generous in the state last month, paying out 92.33 percent of the $143 million wagered. Complete article
Plainridge Park Casino in Plainville brought in less revenue in November than it has in any full month since its June 2015 opening, and November was the second-worst revenue month on record for MGM Springfield, which opened in August 2018. Encore Boston Harbor, which opened June 2019, also had its second-worst revenue showing last month.
Encore reported $47.3 million in gross gaming revenue last month, $22.78 million from slot machines and another $24.52 from table games. Only October saw the Everett casino count less in monthly revenue, when it collected $45.8 million. Of the $286.9 million deposited into Encore’s slot machines last month, 92.06 percent was returned to players.
At MGM Springfield, casino operators counted $19.94 million in gross gaming revenue last month, beating only January 2019’s $19.7 million in terms of monthly revenue. Whereas Encore’s revenue is split somewhat evenly between table games and slots, a greater share of MGM’s revenue comes from slot machines. The casino took in $14.73 million — or about 74 percent of its monthly total — in slot revenue. The MGM slots paid out 91.88 percent of the $181.36 million that players deposited in November.
...... The slots in Plainville were the most generous in the state last month, paying out 92.33 percent of the $143 million wagered. Complete article
Returning about 91%-92% of their revenue to players is actually much better than most forms of gambling, but it's still rigged against the consumers, since they would have to average 100% in order to break even, and slot machines don't put out the rally big jackpots that people are hoping for to be set for life, or at least it may seem to be good odds; however when you consider how gamblers play this is misleading. It seem to assume that they bet a limited amount almost getting their money's worth, but I doubt very much if that's the case, otherwise casinos wouldn't be so profitable.
I remember the first time I got a scratch ticket, or was it the last; it was before the Boston Globe Spotlight did an expose on the lottery in the 1990s and they were still giving out free coupons for scratch tickets in the Value pack in the mail every week. I took the coupon and got a scratch ticket which turned out to be a two dollar winner.
The ticket said I could cash it where ever it's sold so I turned around and went right back in the store and handed it to the cashier, who half turned around then hesitated and stared at me for a few seconds with a funny look on her face; when I said nothing she asked "do you want cash," or something like that.
It didn't sink in at first but her stunned reaction was almost certainly because few if any of her other lottery customers ever cash in a 2$ winner and just take the money; the vast majority of them almost certainly just turn it around and buy two more tickets, At that time it was still only a dollar a ticket; since then they started selling two, five and ten dollar tickets that might seem to pay out more, when they win.
Within a year or two after I played that one scratch ticket which is the only one I ever played, since I knew it was rigged long before that the Boston Globe did a spotlight series exposing how insiders were rigging the lottery skimming the winnings so those not involved in the skim were getting even worse odds than average. This series showed how some insiders were watching to see if the winning tickets were being returned and if they weren't they would buy up the tickets at the end when they knew they were more likely to win, because they knew that there were a fixed volume of winners.
That spotlight report also exposed several other scams showing that it was rigged against the average player even worse than it should have been. I was unable to find an online copy of that but while searching for it I found another one from the same paper A game with a windfall for a knowing few, 07/31/2011 which implies that even after they were exposed at one scam and they reformed their image they waited a few years and enabled more scams. It's reasonable to assume that after this was exposed they just repeated the process; the entire industry is a magnet for fraud!
Robert De Niro as Sam "Ace" Rothstein provided a much more accurate description of how the gambling industry works than the media ever does when he said:
Casino transcript
We're the only winners. The players don't stand a chance. And their cash flows from the tables to our boxes ...through the cage and into the most sacred room in the casino ...the place where they add up all the money ...the holy of holies ...the count room.
......
This is the end result of all the bright lights and the comped trips, of all the champagne and free hotel suites, and all the broads and all the booze. It's all been arranged just for us to get your money. That's the truth about Las Vegas
......
It's a whale like K. K. Ichikawa, who plays thirty thousand dollars a hand in baccarat. That's the one you really gotta watch.
He plays fast and big and he has the cash and the credit to turn out your lights. About a year ago, he cleaned out a couple of casinos in the Cayman Islands.
Downstairs, he takes us for two million... and upstairs he takes free soap, shampoo and towels. Another billionaire cheapskate who loves his free rooms...
........
But we got him back. I had our pilot tell him the plane was on the fritz.
But I knew, the trick with whales like Ichikawa was that they can't bet small for long. He didn't think of it as winning ten thousand, he thought of it as losing ninety thousand.
......
...until he dropped his winnings back and gave up a million of his own cash.
........
...and keep them coming back. The longer they play, the more they lose. In the end, we get it all. Complete article
We're the only winners. The players don't stand a chance. And their cash flows from the tables to our boxes ...through the cage and into the most sacred room in the casino ...the place where they add up all the money ...the holy of holies ...the count room.
......
This is the end result of all the bright lights and the comped trips, of all the champagne and free hotel suites, and all the broads and all the booze. It's all been arranged just for us to get your money. That's the truth about Las Vegas
......
It's a whale like K. K. Ichikawa, who plays thirty thousand dollars a hand in baccarat. That's the one you really gotta watch.
He plays fast and big and he has the cash and the credit to turn out your lights. About a year ago, he cleaned out a couple of casinos in the Cayman Islands.
Downstairs, he takes us for two million... and upstairs he takes free soap, shampoo and towels. Another billionaire cheapskate who loves his free rooms...
........
But we got him back. I had our pilot tell him the plane was on the fritz.
But I knew, the trick with whales like Ichikawa was that they can't bet small for long. He didn't think of it as winning ten thousand, he thought of it as losing ninety thousand.
......
...until he dropped his winnings back and gave up a million of his own cash.
........
...and keep them coming back. The longer they play, the more they lose. In the end, we get it all. Complete article
The article from the Boston Globe might give readers the impression that the average player gets about 92 cents on the dollar but that doesn't take into consideration the way the average player plays at all. If they play a few dozen games at the slots every time they hit the jack pot winning a significant portion of their money back they just keep playing, until they lose it all like "Ace Rothstein" says. Then if a gambler puts in $100 gets $92 back and puts it in again they count this as $192 worth of bets without considering that they turned it over; only this is repeated over and over again so they might count it as five or six hundred dollars in bets returning 92% of it to the player; but in reality the player keeps putting it back and only goes home with a few dollars if anything, so the actual return to players, in many cases is often less than 10% or 20% and in some cases 0% as Ace says!
A look at a few compulsive gamblers including the following one that went on a rampage shows this:
Gambling is an industry that feasts on the poor and vulnerable 09/05/2017
As the betting addict who went on a rampage in Liverpool pointed out, bar staff don’t pour pints for people who have had too many. Why can’t the government rein in the bookies’ relentless growth?
It is not often that I feel sorry for a vandal, let alone a violent one armed with a hammer, but when Eric Baptista went on a rampage in Liverpool recently he had my sympathies. A problem gambler, he says he had begged to be barred from all of his local bookies, but that they refused to stop serving him. He was too good a customer, regularly losing £400 in a matter of minutes on the fixed-odds machines.
In May, Baptista took drastic action. If the wretched betting shops wouldn’t stop taking his business, he would put them out of business, he reasoned. He had lost yet another £100 in the William Hill on Aigburth Road when a circuit in his brain tripped. He went next door to buy two tins of black paint and set about smearing it over everything he could see. He didn’t stop there, visiting six other branches over a three-week period, causing £36,000 of damage by smashing up betting terminals, TV screens and gambling machines.
Last month, he pleaded guilty to criminal damage and was given a 12-month suspended sentence and ordered to do 150 hours of unpaid community work. Liverpool crown court heard that during one of his rampages he shouted: “This is a protest. I am sorry; there is no safety net for customers.”
Horrible as it must have been for the staff he terrorised, they should have been allowed to stop serving him. As Baptista later argued, when he was a barman, he wouldn’t pour pints for people who had had too many; why, when the bookies knew he was an addict, did they allow him to keep feeding the machines?
They allowed him because gambling is an industry that feasts on the poor and vulnerable to survive. Last week, 888, one of Britain’s biggest online gambling firms, was fined £7.8m after allowing more than 7,000 people who had chosen to exclude themselves from its casino/poker/sport platform to access their accounts and continue gambling. Also last week, a Guardian investigation found that betting firms were using third-party companies to harvest personal data, helping bookmakers and online casinos target people on low incomes and those who have stopped gambling. Complete article
As the betting addict who went on a rampage in Liverpool pointed out, bar staff don’t pour pints for people who have had too many. Why can’t the government rein in the bookies’ relentless growth?
It is not often that I feel sorry for a vandal, let alone a violent one armed with a hammer, but when Eric Baptista went on a rampage in Liverpool recently he had my sympathies. A problem gambler, he says he had begged to be barred from all of his local bookies, but that they refused to stop serving him. He was too good a customer, regularly losing £400 in a matter of minutes on the fixed-odds machines.
In May, Baptista took drastic action. If the wretched betting shops wouldn’t stop taking his business, he would put them out of business, he reasoned. He had lost yet another £100 in the William Hill on Aigburth Road when a circuit in his brain tripped. He went next door to buy two tins of black paint and set about smearing it over everything he could see. He didn’t stop there, visiting six other branches over a three-week period, causing £36,000 of damage by smashing up betting terminals, TV screens and gambling machines.
Last month, he pleaded guilty to criminal damage and was given a 12-month suspended sentence and ordered to do 150 hours of unpaid community work. Liverpool crown court heard that during one of his rampages he shouted: “This is a protest. I am sorry; there is no safety net for customers.”
Horrible as it must have been for the staff he terrorised, they should have been allowed to stop serving him. As Baptista later argued, when he was a barman, he wouldn’t pour pints for people who had had too many; why, when the bookies knew he was an addict, did they allow him to keep feeding the machines?
They allowed him because gambling is an industry that feasts on the poor and vulnerable to survive. Last week, 888, one of Britain’s biggest online gambling firms, was fined £7.8m after allowing more than 7,000 people who had chosen to exclude themselves from its casino/poker/sport platform to access their accounts and continue gambling. Also last week, a Guardian investigation found that betting firms were using third-party companies to harvest personal data, helping bookmakers and online casinos target people on low incomes and those who have stopped gambling. Complete article
Even though I wouldn't recommend this tactic of challenging the gambling industry, compared to many other problem gamblers his actions are semi-admirable, some people might even say heroic. At least he only carried out property damage, although he may have scared people while doing so.
After the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay mass shooting I looked into other violence at Casinos, as reported in Las Vegas Massacre Is Just A Minuscule Fraction Of Gambling Crime and found that there were much more than the media was reporting on and that this is an enormous problem. I didn't look quite as thoroughly this time but did another relatively quick search and quickly turned up a couple dozen more murders at Casinos since then. If I conduct more thorough searches for specific casinos, I have no doubt that given enough time that many more will turn out, since I've done this before.
However almost all of these are are reported as isolated incidents at the local level, when mainstream media does report on more than one or two incidents, it's usually not much more. The same goes for problem gamblers that try to get help being banned from casinos; ironically in many cases they agree to ban them and prevent them from collecting winnings as a deterrent, but don't enforce the ban until problem gamblers win. This means when problem gamblers can't stop themselves they can rake in the money; but when they win large jackpots that trigger requirements that they deposit some into a tax withholding account then they check it and refuse to pay him anything like the following example:
Foxwoods didn’t stop gambling addict who asked to be banned — until he won 01/29/2017
MASHANTUCKET, Conn. — On the edge of a vast casino, David Schreiber played video poker at a frenetic pace — fast enough to place almost 50 bets a minute. Beat, pause, beat-beat, pause. Over and over again.
An admitted compulsive gambler, Schreiber was not supposed to be here on the gambling floor at Foxwoods Resort Casino. Three years ago, distraught over his gambling losses, he asked the Indian-owned casino to ban him for life, a desperate step he hoped would save him from himself.
Foxwoods, like most casinos, keeps a “voluntary self-exclusion” list of compulsive gamblers who sign an agreement that they would be denied entry or ejected from the premises, and denied rights to winnings. Casinos, responding to critics, point to the program as evidence that they are responsible institutions.
But in Schreiber’s case, at least, neither part of the equation has worked: He keeps gambling and, he says, Foxwoods does not stop him.
“I’ve been back to Foxwoods a hundred times since I got on the list,” Schreiber, 59, of Danielson, Conn., said after a betting session on the Game King poker machine. “They don’t enforce it. It’s a joke.”
Schreiber said he has been detected only once, when he won a $1,250 jackpot, large enough to trigger the requirement that he deposit a portion of his winnings into a tax withholding account. As it turned out, he didn’t get to keep a cent, he said.
“They took me to an office and wouldn’t let me keep the money,” he said. “After that, they said they were going to keep a real close eye on me. But they didn’t.” ..... In a statement, casino officials said, “We’ve supported responsible gaming at Foxwoods from day one,” such as funding prevention programs for problem and underage gambling.
“To further help out those who opt for exclusion, we take additional cautionary measures such as freezing their rewards accounts, which eliminates the ability for them to accumulate points or access complimentary offerings, and removing them from our marketing list so they no longer receive gaming offers and announcements,” officials said. “We also flag them in our systems so that we can intervene if they attempt to collect jackpot winnings.” .......
But those who work with compulsive gamblers say exclusion agreements, while well-intentioned, are largely symbolic gestures that offer little deterrence. .......
Among advocates for problem gamblers, there is also “considerable skepticism” that casinos are especially motivated to enforce the bans. “Casinos enforce it only when they’re about to lose money,” said Whyte. “It’s ripe for abuse.” .......
“It’s a sham,” Les Bernal, national director of Stop Predatory Gambling, which opposes government-sanctioned gambling. “It’s public relations, at best. The casinos say they are taking steps to protect consumers, but they get their profits from problem gamblers every day.” Complete article
MASHANTUCKET, Conn. — On the edge of a vast casino, David Schreiber played video poker at a frenetic pace — fast enough to place almost 50 bets a minute. Beat, pause, beat-beat, pause. Over and over again.
An admitted compulsive gambler, Schreiber was not supposed to be here on the gambling floor at Foxwoods Resort Casino. Three years ago, distraught over his gambling losses, he asked the Indian-owned casino to ban him for life, a desperate step he hoped would save him from himself.
Foxwoods, like most casinos, keeps a “voluntary self-exclusion” list of compulsive gamblers who sign an agreement that they would be denied entry or ejected from the premises, and denied rights to winnings. Casinos, responding to critics, point to the program as evidence that they are responsible institutions.
But in Schreiber’s case, at least, neither part of the equation has worked: He keeps gambling and, he says, Foxwoods does not stop him.
“I’ve been back to Foxwoods a hundred times since I got on the list,” Schreiber, 59, of Danielson, Conn., said after a betting session on the Game King poker machine. “They don’t enforce it. It’s a joke.”
Schreiber said he has been detected only once, when he won a $1,250 jackpot, large enough to trigger the requirement that he deposit a portion of his winnings into a tax withholding account. As it turned out, he didn’t get to keep a cent, he said.
“They took me to an office and wouldn’t let me keep the money,” he said. “After that, they said they were going to keep a real close eye on me. But they didn’t.” ..... In a statement, casino officials said, “We’ve supported responsible gaming at Foxwoods from day one,” such as funding prevention programs for problem and underage gambling.
“To further help out those who opt for exclusion, we take additional cautionary measures such as freezing their rewards accounts, which eliminates the ability for them to accumulate points or access complimentary offerings, and removing them from our marketing list so they no longer receive gaming offers and announcements,” officials said. “We also flag them in our systems so that we can intervene if they attempt to collect jackpot winnings.” .......
But those who work with compulsive gamblers say exclusion agreements, while well-intentioned, are largely symbolic gestures that offer little deterrence. .......
Among advocates for problem gamblers, there is also “considerable skepticism” that casinos are especially motivated to enforce the bans. “Casinos enforce it only when they’re about to lose money,” said Whyte. “It’s ripe for abuse.” .......
“It’s a sham,” Les Bernal, national director of Stop Predatory Gambling, which opposes government-sanctioned gambling. “It’s public relations, at best. The casinos say they are taking steps to protect consumers, but they get their profits from problem gamblers every day.” Complete article
In that particular case the Casino was supposed to turn the winnings over to the state, so instead of giving them to the Casino for profit; they supposedly help raise revenue for the state. This may seem like a deterrent to the Casinos to enforce it; however they still kept all his losses for previous gambling trips, which were almost certainly even higher than this jackpot, especially since he even kept on gambling after being refused his winnings. The fact that even then he keeps on gambling shows how compulsive gambling addictions can be for some people; however, since the state is collecting revenue off his addiction, and they're constantly trying to find ways to shift the tax burden away from wealthy campaign donors this gives the state an incentive to do little or nothing, which is what they do; and since the media doesn't adequately report it most people aren't aware how extensive the problem is.
In Indiana there was another similar incident and U.S. courts say casinos have no 'duty of care' responsibility to halt compulsive gamblers from playing 05/05/2011 Another judge in Massachusetts indicated that he was sympathetic to an argument that, since the Casinos spent millions of dollars on their licencing fees that they were entitled to them and that they couldn't have them taken away as a result of a 2014 ballot initiative, however in the end Supreme Judicial Court rules anti-casino petition can go to voters (updated) 06/24/2014 Te Casino industry responded to this set back by spending another 1.79 million, which was almost four times their opponents on advertising or other forms of lobbying against the initiative according to Big Business Is Spending Like Crazy on the Ballot Questions. Does It Matter? 09/29/2014
Where do you think the millions of dollars they spent on their licences and more for the advertising campaign came from? The investors, of course, but they wouldn't have put so much money into this unless they thought they could get a profit off of it; and as usual, if they succeed that profit has to come from the players, and without the problem gamblers it's virtually guaranteed that they won't get their money back so the entire system is stacked against them.
Contrary to the most common claim neither lotteries, Casinos or other forms of gambling are increasing revenue for states that are addicted to them even without fully considering the negative social impacts as the following article shows:
The State Gambling Addiction: Politicians are bleeding problem gamblers to fix their budgets—and it isn’t working. Steven Malanga Summer 2012
In January, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced a bold plan to bring a $4 billion casino and conference center to Queens. But the plan fell apart within months, thanks to the reluctance of the state’s prospective partner, the Malaysian gambling company Genting, to undertake the massive investment without a guarantee that it would have the exclusive right to operate casinos in New York City.
New York is one of several states that don’t want to be left behind as their neighbors institute more and more varieties of gambling. At least 12 states, facing downturn-depleted coffers, have already expanded gambling efforts over the last three years—including Massachusetts, which became the 16th state to sanction casinos. But this approach is utterly misguided, since gambling has often disappointed as a fiscal tool and as an economic-development strategy. As legal gambling has spread, competition for limited dollars has intensified, and the new gambling enterprises seem merely to be siphoning money from elsewhere in the economy instead of generating new economic activity. “This is not an industry that creates wealth,” says Les Bernal, head of the Stop Predatory Gambling Foundation. “It’s an industry that transfers wealth.” And that’s before taking into account the documented social costs, including the disturbing fact that a significant part of gambling revenues comes from problem gamblers.
Gambling has been part of the American experience since the Founding. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, privately run lotteries, authorized by states, helped raise funds for everything from religious institutions to colleges. Harvard and Yale, for example, financed some new construction with lotteries. But as the practice grew more popular, fraud and other abuses increased, leading to a backlash. From the 1830s on, states began banning lotteries. The last state-sanctioned one ended in 1894, and the following year, Congress prohibited the interstate promotion of lotteries, making it tough to launch new ones. .......
Gambling hasn’t lived up to its promise of closing budget gaps. Stateline, a service of the Pew Center on the States, examined ten states that had legalized or expanded gambling over the past decade and found that, in most cases, revenue fell well short of initial projections, despite the usual claim that gambling is recession-proof. Oklahoma officials, for example, predicted that their lottery, launched in 2005, would raise $150 million in yearly revenue; five years later, the take was only $70 million. Also in 2005, Maine approved “racinos,” racetracks with electronic gambling machines, predicting that they would shower the state with $32 million a year; they have yet to hit that number. More recently, Arkansas claimed that its new lottery would generate $100 million annually for state-sponsored college scholarships; the take last year was $89 million.
The shortfalls are greater in the states that adopted gambling earlier, since those states have lost their lucrative monopolies. Take the New Jersey government, whose haul from Atlantic City casinos peaked at $477 million in 2006, the year before the first casino opened in neighboring Pennsylvania, and shrank to $327 million in 2010. Other places face similar threats if their neighbors get into the game. A study commissioned by the Louisiana Gaming Control Board, for instance, warned that gambling’s benefits to the state outweighed its costs largely because Texans crossed the border to gamble. If Texas were to legalize casinos, the study concluded, Louisiana’s industry would suffer.
The legalization of new forms of gambling has helped destroy older ones. Pari-mutuel betting at state-sanctioned racetracks, once the most common form of gambling, now raises just $150 million in annual state revenue. In New Jersey, casinos have killed it off. When Jersey first legalized casino gambling, racetracks were home to 80 percent of legal betting in the state; today, they account for only 2 percent. Average daily attendance at the state’s Meadowlands Racetrack—the revenues from which helped build Giants Stadium, since demolished—is down to 2,800, from 16,500 in the mid-seventies. The New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which built and ran the track, is insolvent.
Over the long term, gambling revenue has failed to hold down taxes, despite supporters’ predictions. New Jersey was the first state to legalize both casinos and the lottery. When its first casino opened in 1978, the state was the fifth most heavily taxed in America, according to the Tax Foundation. Now, despite garnering more revenue from gambling than all but four states, its tax burden is the nation’s second heaviest. New York, which brings in the most money from gambling, is also the nation’s most heavily taxed state. Louisiana’s state lottery started in 1991, followed in 1993 by privately owned video poker and casinos. Since 1994, the state’s average per-capita tax burden has increased from $2,080 (in today’s dollars) to more than $3,000. “Initially, when gambling came in, it was highly misrepresented at the time as an answer to all our fiscal problems. History has simply proven that not to be true,” Louisiana state senator A. G. Crowe told the press in 2008. .......
Indiana legalized gambling in 1993, and several years later, casinos opened in the impoverished city of Gary. The city’s mayor testified before members of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission that revenues from gambling were helping revive the city. Over the long term, though, casinos brought no appreciable benefit to Gary’s economy. In 1990, the census shows, family income in Gary was $38,158 in today’s dollars; it now averages $33,158—about 13 percent lower than before the casinos arrived. The city’s poverty rate remains unchanged. Atlantic City and Gary don’t seem unusual in this respect. As part of the congressional commission’s 1999 study, the National Opinion Research Center surveyed communities with legal gambling. It concluded that gambling produced no boost “in overall per capita income,” as increases in certain industries were offset by declines in others.
No effort to assess the impact of legal gambling can ignore its social costs. The Tax Foundation argues that state lotteries represent one of the steepest of all taxes, since the government keeps an average of 42 percent of betting proceeds—far higher than the sales-tax rate that states would charge if the wagered money were spent on something else. The lottery tax is also hidden, since few people recognize it as a government levy. And the burden of this hidden tax is not equally distributed. Numerous studies have shown that lotteries tend to attract lower-income, less educated players, cutting significantly into personal income and private-sector spending in poorer neighborhoods. One recent study found that households with less than $12,000 per year in annual income spend 5 percent of it on the lottery. In part, lower-income households spend so much because they buy the aggressive advertising of state lotteries, which claims that participating in them will bring you riches. A poll several years ago found that 38 percent of those earning less than $25,000 annually considered buying lottery tickets a good retirement strategy.
Another social cost is crime, which appears to rise after casinos open. The most comprehensive study of crime and legal gambling, conducted by economists Earl Grinols and David Mustard and published in The Review of Economic Statistics in 2006, examined 167 counties where casinos had opened over the 20-year period ending in 1996. In those counties, the authors estimated, 5.5 percent to 30 percent of serious crimes in six categories were attributable to gambling. The casino counties suffered 157 more aggravated assaults per 100,000 residents than non-casino counties did, for example. Of the seven kinds of crime studied, only one, murder, didn’t spike. Making the point that social costs are economic costs as well, the study estimated that by 1996, the extra crime was costing the casino communities $1.8 billion (in today’s dollars) per year.
Some of the increase in lawbreaking can be attributed to problem gamblers who grow desperate and turn to crime to pay for their addiction. The National Research Council estimated in the 1999 congressional gambling study that 1.5 percent of adults were “pathological” gamblers and that another 3.9 percent were “problem” gamblers. (The difference lies in how many of the ten criteria for problem gambling someone displays.) The commission also referred to Harvard Medical School research concluding that as many as 7.9 million adolescents were potentially pathological or problem gamblers.
Perhaps the most unsettling statistic associated with legal gambling—obscured by media clichés about how “nearly everyone” gambles occasionally in America—is the inordinately large share of gambling revenue that comes from problem gamblers. A 1998 study commissioned by Montana’s state gambling commission estimated that problem gamblers accounted for 36 percent of revenue from electronic gambling devices and 18 percent of lottery scratch-ticket sales. A 1999 study by the Louisiana Gaming Control Board determined that problem gamblers accounted for 30 percent of spending on riverboat casinos, 42 percent of spending at Indian casinos, and 27 percent of betting on video lottery terminals and other electronic games. A 2004 report in Ontario, Canada, found that problem gamblers, though constituting about 4.8 percent of the province’s population, produced 35 percent of its gambling revenue from lotteries, sports betting, bingo, gambling machines, and casinos. The report’s authors pointed out that their findings contributed to “converging lines of evidence indicating that a substantial portion of gaming revenue derives from people who are negatively impacted by their involvement in this activity.”
Even instant games aren’t as addictive as the favorite gambling instruments of legal-betting proponents: video slot and poker machines. Around the country, states have introduced these devices at “slot-only” or “convenience” casinos, sometimes at failing racetracks. The machines’ sophisticated technology makes losing feel like winning by feeding players near-winning combinations. This triggers the release of dopamine, the body’s feel-good chemical, in the players’ brains, encouraging them to keep playing—and losing. So addictive are these machines, according to Kevin Horrigan, a video-game designer and computer-science expert at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, that two-thirds of those seeking help for gambling addictions in the province report that their principal gambling activity is using video slots. One Wisconsin lawyer, jailed for gambling away $2.5 million of a client’s money on slot machines, described them at his 2010 sentencing as “the greatest drug there ever was.” The rapid spread of video slot machines has already resulted in at least one staggering social meltdown. From the early 1990s through the end of the decade, after a series of court rulings interpreted a state law that permitted payoffs on pinball machines to include video slot machines, the devices proliferated in South Carolina. By 1996, more than 18,000 machines were in operation around the state, and three years later, the number had doubled, collecting $3.3 billion a year in bets. The social effects were hard to miss, even for those who had initially backed gambling. One study found that the fraction of problem gamblers in the state’s population had increased from 2 percent to 12 percent. Just two years after the final court ruling, bankruptcies had risen 33 percent, and financial fraud, including the passing of bad checks, had jumped by nearly half. Horrifying stories made headlines, including one of a mother who left her ten-month-old baby in her sweltering car, windows closed, while she played video poker at a roadside casino for seven hours; the baby died of dehydration. Revulsion over such stories eventually helped create a broad coalition, ranging from churches to the state’s chamber of commerce, opposing the terminals. In 1999, the state banned them, ending what the Charlotte Observer called a “long messy experiment” with video betting.
......
So politicians, too, are addicted to gambling. Their addiction will damage many lives—and fail to help state finances. Complete article
In January, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced a bold plan to bring a $4 billion casino and conference center to Queens. But the plan fell apart within months, thanks to the reluctance of the state’s prospective partner, the Malaysian gambling company Genting, to undertake the massive investment without a guarantee that it would have the exclusive right to operate casinos in New York City.
New York is one of several states that don’t want to be left behind as their neighbors institute more and more varieties of gambling. At least 12 states, facing downturn-depleted coffers, have already expanded gambling efforts over the last three years—including Massachusetts, which became the 16th state to sanction casinos. But this approach is utterly misguided, since gambling has often disappointed as a fiscal tool and as an economic-development strategy. As legal gambling has spread, competition for limited dollars has intensified, and the new gambling enterprises seem merely to be siphoning money from elsewhere in the economy instead of generating new economic activity. “This is not an industry that creates wealth,” says Les Bernal, head of the Stop Predatory Gambling Foundation. “It’s an industry that transfers wealth.” And that’s before taking into account the documented social costs, including the disturbing fact that a significant part of gambling revenues comes from problem gamblers.
Gambling has been part of the American experience since the Founding. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, privately run lotteries, authorized by states, helped raise funds for everything from religious institutions to colleges. Harvard and Yale, for example, financed some new construction with lotteries. But as the practice grew more popular, fraud and other abuses increased, leading to a backlash. From the 1830s on, states began banning lotteries. The last state-sanctioned one ended in 1894, and the following year, Congress prohibited the interstate promotion of lotteries, making it tough to launch new ones. .......
Gambling hasn’t lived up to its promise of closing budget gaps. Stateline, a service of the Pew Center on the States, examined ten states that had legalized or expanded gambling over the past decade and found that, in most cases, revenue fell well short of initial projections, despite the usual claim that gambling is recession-proof. Oklahoma officials, for example, predicted that their lottery, launched in 2005, would raise $150 million in yearly revenue; five years later, the take was only $70 million. Also in 2005, Maine approved “racinos,” racetracks with electronic gambling machines, predicting that they would shower the state with $32 million a year; they have yet to hit that number. More recently, Arkansas claimed that its new lottery would generate $100 million annually for state-sponsored college scholarships; the take last year was $89 million.
The shortfalls are greater in the states that adopted gambling earlier, since those states have lost their lucrative monopolies. Take the New Jersey government, whose haul from Atlantic City casinos peaked at $477 million in 2006, the year before the first casino opened in neighboring Pennsylvania, and shrank to $327 million in 2010. Other places face similar threats if their neighbors get into the game. A study commissioned by the Louisiana Gaming Control Board, for instance, warned that gambling’s benefits to the state outweighed its costs largely because Texans crossed the border to gamble. If Texas were to legalize casinos, the study concluded, Louisiana’s industry would suffer.
The legalization of new forms of gambling has helped destroy older ones. Pari-mutuel betting at state-sanctioned racetracks, once the most common form of gambling, now raises just $150 million in annual state revenue. In New Jersey, casinos have killed it off. When Jersey first legalized casino gambling, racetracks were home to 80 percent of legal betting in the state; today, they account for only 2 percent. Average daily attendance at the state’s Meadowlands Racetrack—the revenues from which helped build Giants Stadium, since demolished—is down to 2,800, from 16,500 in the mid-seventies. The New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which built and ran the track, is insolvent.
Over the long term, gambling revenue has failed to hold down taxes, despite supporters’ predictions. New Jersey was the first state to legalize both casinos and the lottery. When its first casino opened in 1978, the state was the fifth most heavily taxed in America, according to the Tax Foundation. Now, despite garnering more revenue from gambling than all but four states, its tax burden is the nation’s second heaviest. New York, which brings in the most money from gambling, is also the nation’s most heavily taxed state. Louisiana’s state lottery started in 1991, followed in 1993 by privately owned video poker and casinos. Since 1994, the state’s average per-capita tax burden has increased from $2,080 (in today’s dollars) to more than $3,000. “Initially, when gambling came in, it was highly misrepresented at the time as an answer to all our fiscal problems. History has simply proven that not to be true,” Louisiana state senator A. G. Crowe told the press in 2008. .......
Indiana legalized gambling in 1993, and several years later, casinos opened in the impoverished city of Gary. The city’s mayor testified before members of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission that revenues from gambling were helping revive the city. Over the long term, though, casinos brought no appreciable benefit to Gary’s economy. In 1990, the census shows, family income in Gary was $38,158 in today’s dollars; it now averages $33,158—about 13 percent lower than before the casinos arrived. The city’s poverty rate remains unchanged. Atlantic City and Gary don’t seem unusual in this respect. As part of the congressional commission’s 1999 study, the National Opinion Research Center surveyed communities with legal gambling. It concluded that gambling produced no boost “in overall per capita income,” as increases in certain industries were offset by declines in others.
No effort to assess the impact of legal gambling can ignore its social costs. The Tax Foundation argues that state lotteries represent one of the steepest of all taxes, since the government keeps an average of 42 percent of betting proceeds—far higher than the sales-tax rate that states would charge if the wagered money were spent on something else. The lottery tax is also hidden, since few people recognize it as a government levy. And the burden of this hidden tax is not equally distributed. Numerous studies have shown that lotteries tend to attract lower-income, less educated players, cutting significantly into personal income and private-sector spending in poorer neighborhoods. One recent study found that households with less than $12,000 per year in annual income spend 5 percent of it on the lottery. In part, lower-income households spend so much because they buy the aggressive advertising of state lotteries, which claims that participating in them will bring you riches. A poll several years ago found that 38 percent of those earning less than $25,000 annually considered buying lottery tickets a good retirement strategy.
Another social cost is crime, which appears to rise after casinos open. The most comprehensive study of crime and legal gambling, conducted by economists Earl Grinols and David Mustard and published in The Review of Economic Statistics in 2006, examined 167 counties where casinos had opened over the 20-year period ending in 1996. In those counties, the authors estimated, 5.5 percent to 30 percent of serious crimes in six categories were attributable to gambling. The casino counties suffered 157 more aggravated assaults per 100,000 residents than non-casino counties did, for example. Of the seven kinds of crime studied, only one, murder, didn’t spike. Making the point that social costs are economic costs as well, the study estimated that by 1996, the extra crime was costing the casino communities $1.8 billion (in today’s dollars) per year.
Some of the increase in lawbreaking can be attributed to problem gamblers who grow desperate and turn to crime to pay for their addiction. The National Research Council estimated in the 1999 congressional gambling study that 1.5 percent of adults were “pathological” gamblers and that another 3.9 percent were “problem” gamblers. (The difference lies in how many of the ten criteria for problem gambling someone displays.) The commission also referred to Harvard Medical School research concluding that as many as 7.9 million adolescents were potentially pathological or problem gamblers.
Perhaps the most unsettling statistic associated with legal gambling—obscured by media clichés about how “nearly everyone” gambles occasionally in America—is the inordinately large share of gambling revenue that comes from problem gamblers. A 1998 study commissioned by Montana’s state gambling commission estimated that problem gamblers accounted for 36 percent of revenue from electronic gambling devices and 18 percent of lottery scratch-ticket sales. A 1999 study by the Louisiana Gaming Control Board determined that problem gamblers accounted for 30 percent of spending on riverboat casinos, 42 percent of spending at Indian casinos, and 27 percent of betting on video lottery terminals and other electronic games. A 2004 report in Ontario, Canada, found that problem gamblers, though constituting about 4.8 percent of the province’s population, produced 35 percent of its gambling revenue from lotteries, sports betting, bingo, gambling machines, and casinos. The report’s authors pointed out that their findings contributed to “converging lines of evidence indicating that a substantial portion of gaming revenue derives from people who are negatively impacted by their involvement in this activity.”
Even instant games aren’t as addictive as the favorite gambling instruments of legal-betting proponents: video slot and poker machines. Around the country, states have introduced these devices at “slot-only” or “convenience” casinos, sometimes at failing racetracks. The machines’ sophisticated technology makes losing feel like winning by feeding players near-winning combinations. This triggers the release of dopamine, the body’s feel-good chemical, in the players’ brains, encouraging them to keep playing—and losing. So addictive are these machines, according to Kevin Horrigan, a video-game designer and computer-science expert at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, that two-thirds of those seeking help for gambling addictions in the province report that their principal gambling activity is using video slots. One Wisconsin lawyer, jailed for gambling away $2.5 million of a client’s money on slot machines, described them at his 2010 sentencing as “the greatest drug there ever was.” The rapid spread of video slot machines has already resulted in at least one staggering social meltdown. From the early 1990s through the end of the decade, after a series of court rulings interpreted a state law that permitted payoffs on pinball machines to include video slot machines, the devices proliferated in South Carolina. By 1996, more than 18,000 machines were in operation around the state, and three years later, the number had doubled, collecting $3.3 billion a year in bets. The social effects were hard to miss, even for those who had initially backed gambling. One study found that the fraction of problem gamblers in the state’s population had increased from 2 percent to 12 percent. Just two years after the final court ruling, bankruptcies had risen 33 percent, and financial fraud, including the passing of bad checks, had jumped by nearly half. Horrifying stories made headlines, including one of a mother who left her ten-month-old baby in her sweltering car, windows closed, while she played video poker at a roadside casino for seven hours; the baby died of dehydration. Revulsion over such stories eventually helped create a broad coalition, ranging from churches to the state’s chamber of commerce, opposing the terminals. In 1999, the state banned them, ending what the Charlotte Observer called a “long messy experiment” with video betting.
......
So politicians, too, are addicted to gambling. Their addiction will damage many lives—and fail to help state finances. Complete article
This article doesn't fully describe the financial costs of the social problems, even though the human costs should be far more important; but they must be astronomical. Within the past week and a half there was a tipple murder in a Montana Casino, there are probably dozens more every year, the Circus Circus Casino in Reno Nevada had another murder and thirteen months earlier they had a double murder at the same casino, my previous article on the subject showed that Donald Trump's Casinos in Atlantic City had more than his share of murders and this was reported during the 2016 election, although cable news and most network news almost ignored it, so most people may not of heard.
This is just a small problem of crime associated with gambling there have always been plenty of studies showing this was a major problem but the political establishment and media ignore them and only highlight the positive propaganda about it deceiving the public.
Do you think ballot initiatives would pass supporting increasing gambling if the public was fully informed about all the crime and violence that's associated with it? Not likely, but the political and media establishment is doing the work for the gambling industry repeating misleading claims over and over again about how many jobs they're creating, without mentioning the obvious fact that these jobs do nothing productive for society and contribute to an enormous amount of social problems.
Apparently there are also studies showing that problem gamblers are more likely to come from dysfunctional homes with violence in the family, which is a major contributing factor for many other social problems including more violence in the next generation when they learn to repeat the actions of their parents. When you add this to poverty and gambling addiction among other things, it makes it even worse.
Yet the political establishment continues to push increased gambling, presumably as part of their efforts to shift the tax burden away from wealthy campaign donors. Instead of looking out for the best interests of the vast majority of the public; politicians and the media are looking for the most effective scams they can pull over on us and this is one of the their favorites, along with insurance companies which operate on the same basic principles!
Las Vegas Massacre Is Just A Minuscule Fraction Of Gambling Crime
How does gambling and gun control impact violent crime?
The tragedy of gambling politics in United States;
The following are plenty of additional stories on the subject, including a large number of murder, stories about child abuse, other crimes and additional studies:
Great Falls Montana casino murders: what we know 12/18/2019 GREAT FALLS — Three people were killed early Tuesday at the Emerald City Casino on 10th Avenue South in Great Falls. Authorities have not released information about the possible motive for the deaths, such as an attempted robbery or other reasons, and are continuing to investigate.
Pechanga Casino Guest Dies From Injuries Suffered in Assault There, Two Women Charged With Murder, Robbery in Ca. 09/07/2019 One of the suspects is the sister of NBA all-star and Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard, who recently signed a massive deal with the Los Angeles Clippers.
Trip to Casino Ended in Murder Caught on Camera: Miami-Dade Police 10/10/2019 Luciano Thompson, 22, was arrested Thursday on a second-degree murder charge in the killing of 24-year-old Eduardo Gonzalez, according to a Miami-Dade Police arrest report
All bets off: Kosovo bans gambling for a decade after casino murders 02/04/2019
Reno Police: Woman stomped to death in vicious murder at Circus Circus Casino 07/31/2019 Same casino had another double murder thirteen months earlier.
Convicted Felon Charged With Circus Circus Murder Headed Towards Trial, Judge Dismisses Police Tampering Claim 07/18/2019 The man charged with murdering two tourists at Circus Circus in June 2018 will see his case continue after a local judge ruled that police didn’t act inappropriately in leading a grand jury to indict him.
Possible Serial Killer Charles Sullivan Suspected in Circus Circus Reno Waitress Abduction, Murder 11/19/2019 Police believe an Arizona man charged in Nevada last Friday with the brutal 1979 murder of Julia Woodward could be a serial killer. He is now the chief suspect in the killing of a cocktail waitress who disappeared from Circus-Circus Reno a year earlier.
KZN cops suspect murder-suicide in Suncoast Beach Casino South Africa murders 11/25/2019
Motor City Casino employee killed in Detroit driveway on way home from work, police say 11/07/2019
Arrest made in 1998 murder of 28-year-old Nguyet 'Anna' Nguyen 10/29/2019 Body not found but suspects were seen on camera visiting at least two casinos
Son nabbed at blackjack table hours after parents found killed in Warren County, authorities say 10/29/2019
Las Vegas Nevada Police shoot, kill suspect in robbery attempt at Laughlin casino 08/19/2019 Another fatal police shooting happened at another Vegas Casino about five months earlier.
The Latest: Las Vegas Nevada Man Killed by Police in Casino Heist ID'd 03/18/2019 Bellagio resort
Man who fatally shot Las Vegas casino executive sentenced 12/21/2019
Revenge seen as motive in fatal shooting outside Las Vegas casino 11/08/2019
A Brawl Between Motorcycle Gangs Turns Fatal at a Nevada Casino 04/28/2002 Three men, all motorcycle gang members, were killed and about a dozen others were injured in a shooting and knifing brawl that broke out in Harrah's casino early this morning among rival bikers attending a huge annual motorcycle rally, the authorities said.
Las Vegas’ Most Notorious Crimes Includes at least a dozen murders & more crimes of other sorts.
Wikipedia: Jeremy Strohmeyer (born October 11, 1978) is a convicted murderer, serving four consecutive life terms for the sexual assault and murder of 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson (October 20, 1989 – May 25, 1997)[1] at Primadonna Resort and Casino in Primm, Nevada, on May 25, 1997. The case drew national attention by focusing on the safety of children in casinos and on the revelation that Strohmeyer's friend, David Cash Jr., said he saw the crime in progress but did not stop it.[2]
Brothers Guilty of Murdering Man for His $7k Casino Winnings 12/27/2019
Woman who plowed motorhome into Las Vegas-area casino charged with attempted murder 10/28/2019
Murdered Harrah's Casino Hotel Guest Stabbed 26 Times in Ill. 03/28/2019
'My baby got killed for nothing;' mother of 2 identified as victim in shooting near Lumiere Casino St. Louis Missouri [Update] 05/28/2019 Homicide detectives were called to a double shooting in downtown St. Louis overnight Sunday.
State police: Glastonbury man claimed self defense in fatal Preston Conn. shooting 10/30/2019 State police said Giannelli shot and killed Robert Thompson, 35, of Preston on Saturday at about 1:20 a.m. Giannelli confessed to the killing, but said it was self defense, according to a probable cause affidavit. At Mohegan Sun Casino
Macau Hong Kong police investigate suspected murder at Sands casino resort: media 02/18/2019
Philly man extradited in brother's alleged murder at Atlantic City casino on May 28 08/19/2019
Murder warrants issued for three Camden men in Atlantic City casino parking garage carjacking and slaying 09/21/2019
Man Accused of Killing 2 in Texas, Arrested in Louisiana Casino 10/10/2019
Casino robbery and shooting at a Louisiana casino results in one death 09/13/2019
Grandma accused of murder gambled at Kinder casino while on the run 04/20/2018
Man Murders His Partner in Melbourne, Goes Gambling After 12/16/2019
My son ended his life because he felt controlled by gambling 08/28/2019
Gary went on a 13-hour gambling binge. He died with nothing left 07/03/2018
Jan. 11, 1981: Mom is out gambling as 11 children die in house fire 01/11/2019
Kids Left in Car While Mom Allegedly Plays the Slots 04/15/2009 Kids and Cars, an advocacy group, found at least 32 such cases between 1994 and 2003. The total number is probably much higher. The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ky., based on an examination of Indiana Gaming Commission records, found 37 instances of children being left unattended while their caretakers were gambling in 1999 and 2000 alone.
Adult gambling addiction tied to childhood trauma 08/17/2017 Compared with men who rarely if ever placed wagers, the men with a pathological addiction to gambling were more than twice as likely to have witnessed violence at home or to have experienced physical abuse or assault growing up. They were also more than three times as likely to have suffered a serious or life-threatening injury as kids.
Gamblers more likely to have suffered childhood traumas 08/02/2017
They died forgotten: how gambling and alcohol shut the door on twins' lives 09/17/2013
Man receives eight-year sentence for starvation of twin toddlers 09/16/2013
Gambling problems start young
New Jersey Task Force on Child Abuse and Neglect Opening Doors Conference “Children of Compulsive Gamblers” Frances L. Gizzi, LCSW, C‐CATODSW, CCGC Jeffrey M. Beck, LPC, CCGC, JD, ABD, CART
Conclusions
• Parental gambling can have significant effect on lives of children children
• Children of compulsive gamblers at increased risk for gambling problems
• Often there are no telltale signs of gambling
• A careful assessment will help determine if gambling is an issue
• There is still a large stigma about gambling; unless asked people will not discuss
The Real History of Martin Scorsese's Casino 12/09/2019
Outburst at Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes is pure Rendell, observers say 01/08/2011
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell Blasts 60 Minutes During Interview on Gambling 01/08/2011 "It's an absolute joke. I was looking forward to this. It would have been a real experience. This is what football is all about. We're becoming a nation of wussies."
How Casinos Target Problem Gamblers 02/28/2012
Don't Bet On It: Casino's Contractual Duty to Stop Compulsive Gamblers from Gambling December 2009 Compulsive gambling' presents a serious threat to the integrity of the casino industry.2 While most patrons frequenting casinos are recreational gamblers, approximately two million of Americans have a serious gambling addiction. 3 This translates into substantial social and economic costs: several studies indicate that over twenty percent of compulsive gamblers quit work or are fired; nearly fifteen percent are hospitalized with health problems related to gambling; almost two thirds planned suicide; a majority had stolen property because of gambling; and each compulsive gambler has an average gambling debt of over sixty thousand dollars. 4
GAMBLING GRANNY: THE ELDERLY’S PROPENSITY FOR GAMBLING ADDICTION AND THE NEED FOR EFFECTIVE LEGAL AND LEGISLATIVE REMEDIES TO PREVENT IT 04/30/2019
Responsible gambling among older adults: a qualitative exploration 04/04/2017
Losing Everything to Gambling Addiction: More older Americans are problem gamblers, but are they betting against their health, too? AARP Bulletin, January/February 2014
The Casino Trap: As the gambling industry booms, aggressive marketing targets older patrons AARP Bulletin, October 2016
Why Casino-Driven Development Is a Roll of the Dice 03/06/2017
How Casinos Enable Gambling Addicts December issue Modern slot machines develop an unbreakable hold on many players—some of whom wind up losing their jobs, their families, and even, as in the case of Scott Stevens, their lives.
Problem Gambling, Poverty and Homelessness 05/06/2019
Revealed: how gambling industry targets poor people and ex-gamblers 08/31/2017
