Gambling News by Gambling Headquarters

Critics of the recently released study on problem gambling are being needlessly harsh in their dismissal of the research. The study by UPEI professor Jason Doiron is neither misleading nor irrelevant. Rather it is incomplete. Doiron looked at the prevalence of problem gambling in the spring of 2005 and compared it to the numbers from a similar study conducted in 1999 and found there was no significant difference. Since there was no significant change in the availability of gambling products over that same time period, the result is not shocking. If nothing changes in gambling, nothing changes in problem gambling. That's good to know, because something significant has changed in gambling since the spring of 2005. That something is the Charlottetown Driving Park Entertainment Centre. Unlike the environment in 1999 or early 2005, there now exists a facility purposefully built and promoted as a gaming centre. The CDP has a room set aside for nothing but video lottery terminals -giving the city a casino/arcade where once gamblers had to lay their bets at either the track, the bar or the cornerstore. Backers of the CDPEC have said it won't contribute to gambling addictions. Opponents have predicted that social and familial decay will emanate from the facility. Now Doiron or some other researcher has the necessary ingredients for a study looking at what happens to problem gambling in a community when there is a major and controversial change in the gambling market. Hopefully government and the Atlantic Lottery Corporation have the courage to fund such a study. It would be useful to add some objectivity to the lingering debate about whether the CDPEC is a plague or a panacea. Both of these parties have invested a lot of money at the track and have an interest in seeing it succeed. But all Islanders have an interest in knowing if a gaming hall built to help the racetrack is leading vulnerable people into crippling addictions.