October 27, 1999
More studies showing gambling's a bad bet
___By Orville Scott
___& Jim Newton
___JACKSON, Miss.--Recent studies, including some by the gambling industry itself, reveal that gambling is more destructive to society and individuals than previously known, according to psychologists and university professors speaking at the annual conference of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling in Jackson, Miss.
___Keynote speaker Kay Coles James, who chaired the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, told about 200 conference participants she was not prepared for the venom, bigotry, prejudice and stereotyping she experienced in leading the congressional study commission on the social and economic impact of gambling in America.
___James, a senior fellow of the Heritage Foundation in Norfolk, Va., told about 200 people she had endured more bigotry and intolerance as a religious conservative leading the study on gambling than she had as a black woman in corporate America.
___James said she never took on the mantle as an advocate against legalized gambling until she had completed her responsibilities as chair of the nine-member study committee appointed by then House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi and President Bill Clinton.
___She challenged church members, anti-gambling advocates and religious leaders to study and challenge the moral impact of legalized gambling on America, pointing out the congressional committee she chaired only dealt with the social and economic impact of gambling.
___Weston Ware, director of citizenship education for the Baptist General Convention of Texas Christian Life Commission, was elected chairperson of the coalition.
___Another Baptist leader, James Futral of the Mississippi Baptist Convention, welcomed conference participants to Mississippi. He said Mississippi, known as the hospitality state, has welcomed both Kudzu and casino gambling inside its borders, and both have pretty much taken over the state.
___"We would be a lot better off without either," Futral observed.
___Robert Goodman, professor at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, presented an analysis of the final report of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, which was released by James' committee in August.
___Studies show that having a gambling facility within 50 miles roughly doubles problem gambling in a community, he said, adding that problems of pathological gamblers are likely to be underestimated.
___"Government is engaged in activity which depends on people with behavioral problems," Goodman said, noting that a third of the revenue from casino gambling comes from people with behavioral problems.
___National figures show criminal justice costs alone are about $5,000 a year per pathological gambler, he said.
___University of Illinois professor John Kindt said the crime costs of 1.5 million new pathological gamblers, which governments created from 1994 to 1997, are at least $15 billion to $34 billion.
___"For every $1 of benefits, gambling costs $3," he said, noting that most conservative estimates of combined regulatory and crime costs are between $9,000 and $11,000 per pathological gambler per year.
___Put another way, casino gambling costs about $150 per adult for every $39 in social benefits, said Earl Grinols, economics professor at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.
___Violent crime rates in casino counties begin to rise dramatically about three years after a casino opens in the county, and overall crime rates in counties with casinos are 8 percent higher than they would be without casinos, Grinols said.
___Nevada has double the national average in suicides and ranks first among states in child death by abuse and has the highest drop-out rate in public schools, he added.
___Kindt said a 1997 study showed gambling abuse outweighed drug abuse, with more than 15 million pathological or problem gamblers compared to 13.2 million illicit drug users.
___He said 3.5 million people, or 2 percent of Americans, became new problem gamblers from 1994 to 1997 at an annual cost to taxpayers of $35 billion. During the same period, 2.2 million new pathological gamblers were created at a cost to taxpayers of $45 billion per year for a combined total of $80 billion per year.
___By comparison, drug abuse cost taxpayers $70 billion per year.
___Valorie Lorenz, executive director of the Compulsive Gambling Center in Baltimore, said the scope of problem and pathological gamblers is greater than anyone had thought.
___"We can only hope to prevent gambling from expanding, because the numbers of pathological gamblers are growing with the expansion of the gambling industry," Lorenz said.?
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___Orville Scott writes for Texas Baptist Communications, and Jim Newton is a freelance writer based in Jackson, Miss.
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