The 50 Mile Rule

Former addict: New casino poses threat for problem gamblers

By LISA ERMAK
The Holland Sentinel


Holland, MI — Michael Burke had to hit rock bottom before he realized he was gambling his life away.

The Michigan native now is a motivational speaker in the field of cross-addiction and compulsive gambling. He lectures nationally on the devastation of trading addictions, something he knows a lot about because he got into it 10 years ago.

After Burke recovered from alcoholism, gambling came next, and his 26-year-long career as an attorney came to a halt once he started stealing money from his clients’ trust accounts and gambled his children’s college funds dry.

“I really loved the high life of gambling, and I would go to Las Vegas once a year and gamble my brains out. I loved everything about it. It was exactly like drinking for me.”

In 2001, Burke turned himself in and was sentenced to three years in Jackson State Prison and was ordered to repay a sum of $1.6 million.

“I went from being a social gambler to a compulsive gambler in about three to four years,” he said.

Although stories like Burke’s only afflict just about 2 to 4 percent of the population, that’s a big number of people. In Michigan, it’s about 350,000 people.

Patrick Witri, president of the Michigan Association On Problem Gambling, said with the new Gun Lake Casino open in Wayland, more people in West Michigan will be exposed to the dark side of gambling.

According to a study by Western Michigan University, for 96 percent of the population, gambling is a perfectly reasonable recreational activity, but for others it can be devastating.

It’s something he and other industry professionals attribute to the 50-mile rule.

Every time a new venue is opened, problems associated with problem gambling will double within a 50- to 60-mile radius of the casino.

Those problems take the form of white-collar crimes, such as embezzlement, spousal abuse and child abuse.

“What happens when a new casino opens is those who haven’t been inclined to travel for a casino, will,” Witri said.

“It’s like a new mall opening up, people say, ‘Hey, let’s go down there.’”

Then the fun of the game quickly spirals into an addiction, but it takes folks a little while to get to that point.

“We won’t see the problems (in West Michigan) for about three to four years,” Burke said.

“You can’t smell a deck of cards on a compulsive gambler.”