Gambling News by Gambling Headquarters

EVERYBODY KNOWS we have a problem-gambling problem. And everybody's got a different take on how to address it. As solutions go, mine is quite radical. First, bring all the parking meters in from the cold - to replace all the VLTs that have taken up residence indoors in our province, from taverns to pool halls and casinos. Hey, people could still park their butts in front of them and feed money into the machines. Their odds of winning wouldn't even change much. But as a pastime, feeding the meters - especially if there are no bells and whistles attached - would be deadly. Which is exactly what the doctor ordered, right? Second, put one-armed bandits out on the sidewalk where the parking meters used to be. That way, lucky motorists could win the jackpot when they put any amount of change in. I'm willing to bet most would rather take their chances on the meter than on the commissionaire coming by with pen and pad in hand. City coffers would be bulging and the parking-ticket bureaucracy would quickly become obsolete. Of course, I'm half-joking. Which half I'm joking about, I'm not really sure. Thankfully, there are serious people doing serious research on societal attitudes towards gambling and making serious recommendations (unlike me). One such person is Christiane Poulin, an addictions expert at Dalhousie medical school, who makes an interesting argument in the current issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Her view, in a nutshell, is that we should learn from our successes in the cigarette wars and apply those lessons to gambling. She advocates limiting the number of lotteries you can play, driving up the price of lottery tickets through taxation and forcing retailers to keep tickets behind the counter. Go with plain packaging and addiction warning labels. Further cull the VLT herd, she says, and ban new casinos and gambling advertising altogether. Come to think of it, her answer sounds almost as radical as mine. But there is good reason to contemplate a crackdown. Gambling in all its forms is growing by leaps and bounds and there is mounting evidence that kids are getting hooked younger and harder. Betting on sports is the "gateway" drug here. Don't take it from me. McGill University in Montreal actually has an International Centre for Youth Gambling Problems and High Risk Behaviours. Recently, it even set up a website which provides teens with a forum to anonymously discuss their gambling problems with counsellors.

An estimated 70 per cent of kids under 18 have reported participating in some kind of gambling activity over the previous 12 months. "We found that four to six per cent are actually experiencing severe gambling problems, what you would call an adult pathological gambler," McGill researcher Alissa Sklar said in a recent interview with the Canadian Press.

"These rates are roughly three times the rate for gambling disorders in the adult population."

You may counter that it's unfair to spoil the fun of the many to stop the foolishness of the few. Fair enough. It does seem stupid to overreact to what remains a statistically small problem, no matter how you slice it. (Alcohol abuse, for example, has a far more pervasive and devastating social impact. As such, it's harder to tackle head-on. Yet that should not preclude us from doing something about lesser plagues, and the truth is gambling addiction is burning a hole through pockets, families and communities.)

At issue is not so much the legalization of gambling, but its normalization over the past decade. As a society, we have gone from tolerating it, which is the most we should do, to promoting it, which is the worst we can do. Some people argue it's a benign social activity, if not a beneficial one. But that's short-sighted.

"In theory, government gambling revenues benefit all of society. In reality, since gambling revenues go into general revenue pots, individuals who do not participate in gambling activities end up being the biggest winners because they benefit without having invested anything," Ms. Poulin writes. "Furthermore, a disproportionate number of individuals who participate in certain gambling activities (e.g., video lottery terminals [VLTs]) are from disadvantaged groups in our society.

"Decisions and policy pertaining to gambling need to be based on a full accounting of the health, economic and social benefits and costs of gambling, rather than on only the short-term benefits of employment and tax revenue."

I especially agree with Ms. Poulin's proposed ban on gambling advertising, for the simple reason that the industry gets far more than its fair share of free publicity as it is. Have you ever come home after work, turned on the sports channel and wondered, "When exactly did poker become a sport?"

But that's not when I had my personal epiphany. I realized the gambling ethic had become a tad too mainstream while watching Deal or No Deal. That game show is in a league of its own. Gone is the pretence of rewarding contestants for their qualities, intellectual or otherwise. The only true qualification you need on Deal or No Deal is a healthy risk-taking gene. And it's awfully easy to forget that it's the network's money that contestants are playing with, not their own.

Deal or No Deal is actually a luridly fascinating look at the insidiousness of gambling. If somebody off the street handed you $5,000 just like that, you'd be ecstatic. Every contestant could at least walk away with that much on Howie Mandel's program. Just making it on to the show is the equivalent of winning the lottery. But it isn't very long before these "winners" are turning down $165,000 offers as if it were parking-meter change. Of course, if they didn't, it would be a very dull spectacle, indeed.

Don't get me wrong. I don't believe in prohibition or censorship. But I do believe the pendulum of social attitudes has swung too far towards permissiveness when it comes to gambling. It's time to bring it back.