Protections cut by budget shortfalls

Budget woes eroding help for gamblers
Fewer safeguards in place for the compulsive
Written by
Kirk Moore Staff Writer

With New Jersey scrambling to prop up its gaming industry against competition from other states, advocates who support treatment for compulsive gamblers say there are fewer safeguards in place – and more danger they will get into serious trouble.

“There are no inspectors on the casino floors anymore,” said Donald F. Weinbaum, executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey. “The Casino Control Commission used to be a point of contact for people with problems or people who have concerns with what they are seeing, but it’s not clear where they can go now.”

New Jersey government’s prolonged budget crisis is shaking safety nets out of the gaming industry, Weinbaum said. Members of Gamblers Anonymous, the support group and fellowship for compulsive gamblers and their families, say they worry for people vulnerable to what psychiatrists define as a “nonchemical addiction.”

Without treatment, experts say up to 30 percent of seriously addicted gamblers may break the law to get money for feeding their habit. Gamblers Anonymous members suggest it’s a motive behind many cases of suburban white-collar crime, like embezzlements.

“My drug of gambling was the casinos and the lottery,” Stephanie Iacopino said as she recounted her arrest and imprisonment for diverting money from a church charity. Now released on the state’s Intensive Supervision Program, Iacopino tells her cautionary tale to gambler support groups and high school students.

Her father had bet on sports, and she started at age 19 when New Jersey’s state lottery got going. “I thought, this is fun,” Iacopino said. During the 1980s heyday of Atlantic City casinos, with their liberal comps, she started gambling there.
“I never felt anything better,” Iacopino recalled of her first trip. “My drug was poker slots.”

But as her addiction built, Iacopino said, “I lied. I lied all the time.”
Her money problems got Iacopino into serious trouble in 1991, but her family helped pull her back from the brink and she began attending Gamblers Anonymous.

“I was clean for a couple of years,” she said. But even after suffering strokes, she began playing lotteries again, enlisting a friend to buy her tickets. She returned to Gamblers Anonymous meetings, fighting a back-and-forth struggle.

A devout Catholic, Iacopino and her husband began doing volunteer charity work with the St. Vincent DePaul Society of St. Martha’s Church in Point Pleasant. Her husband became treasurer, with an ATM card for making withdrawals on behalf of needy families.

In July 2008, Iacopino began taking the card to pay for gambling in Atlantic City, stealing $18,000 to gamble in almost 10 months. In 2010, she pleaded guilty to second-degree theft and was sentenced to three years in prison, but got an early release to the ISP program with an obligation to repay the money.

The state could do more to help at little cost, advocates say.

“In prison there’s no GA,” Iacopino said, although several female prisoners she met at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton had wound up there because of their gambling addictions. Prison administrators and social workers see compulsive gambling as “a thing with men only,” she said.

“They’re nice people … but they have no program,” she said. “They need GA for women.”
Counseling there is focused on the role of alcohol or narcotics with inmates’ problems, said another woman who did time at Clinton and was released into the ISP probation that includes nightly curfews and check-ins with officers.

Treatment and group counseling for alcohol and narcotics addiction are among a host of social services at the Mahan facility, but there are no Gamblers Anonymous services there, said Deirdre Fedkenheuer, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections.

The department does not have a prison population breakdown that shows how many inmates have gambling problems, but independent research shows the numbers are considerable.

“Surveys of Gamblers Anonymous members show one-half to two-thirds of them have done something illegal connected to their gambling,” said Henry Lesieur, a clinical psychologist with the Rhode Island Gambling Treatment Program at Rhode Island Hospital, and a national expert on pathological gambling. “A national study of the pathological gaming population showed 30 percent of them have been arrested.”

It’s simply not true that gambling tends to be a male obsession, Lesieur said.

“There’s no difference between men and women,” said Lesieur, whose own prison surveys find gambling problems in about 15 percent of those populations. One survey he did in New Jersey prisons returned a 13 percent figure.

Psychiatric manuals group compulsive gambling under “disorders of impulse control,” Lesieur said. But also “you find very high rates of other problems” besetting gamblers, including alcohol and drug abuse, anxiety, and symptoms of clinical depression that appear in as many as three out of four compulsive gamers, he said.

“There is not enough recognition that problem gambling is equal-opportunity among women as well as for men,” said Weinbaum of the New Jersey state council. There are differences in gaming preferences among women and men, he said; table games like poker attract more men while slots are preferred by women.

But for compulsive gamblers the effect is all the same, and Weinbaum said advocates are trying to educate corrections and social workers about betting obsessions among women.

“There is a significant correlation” of gambling and white-collar crime, Weinbaum said. “Bettors who have exhausted all legal sources, family sources, what is left is illegal sources.

“There may be an intention of paying it back after a big win,” he added. “But most gamblers just plow their winnings right back into play.”

“Gambling problems are treatable. Anyone who needs help can get it,” Weinbaum said. Family members trying to get help for a loved one often need the help that support and fellowship groups offer.

Compulsive gamblers can register for “self-exclusion” from casinos, putting them on a list that means any winnings will be withheld if they have a relapse. But in Atlantic City, “for a long time they haven’t been looking,” said Iacopino, who took up self-exclusion from New Jersey casinos, and Pennsylvania gaming halls for good measure.

“Self-exclusion is a good area to look at. We have a little over 1,000 people on the list, and that should probably be higher compared to other states. Pennsylvania has 2,000 people,” Weinbaum said. “Clearly, people (on the self-exclusion list) are getting in the doors. They’re only getting intercepted if they have a winning.”

With the gaming industry battered by years of increasing competition from neighboring states and the recession, advocates see protections have been in retreat for an estimated 350,000 New Jerseyans prone to pathological gambling based on what’s known about that population.

“Our position is every casino needs a training program” so workers can spot and get help for compulsive gamers, Weinbaum said. “One sign is you have an player who never leaves the table, never takes a break, even to go to the bathroom.”

Compulsive gamblers call their obsession “the action.” It’s being in the game, whether carding or pulling the slot machine, sports bets or the lottery. On a casino floor, they say, it’s not unusual for them to put in a 14- or 15-hour session before their money and energy are finally drained.

“They exhibit a lot of emotion, extreme upset,” Weinbaum said. “A problem gambler in action is going to play and play until they’re out of money.”

Even in recovery, gamblers are tortured. Iacopino says she avoids watching local television news programs so she does not see the daily lottery numbers.

Before her last relapse and arrest, one more mistake was visiting relatives in Nevada and staying in a casino hotel, even when she stayed away from the slot machine floor, Iacopino said: “You’re in these places and you can hear it, bing-bing-bing-bing-bing.”

Now, she says, “I have three great nieces and one great nephew in Nevada, but I know I can never go there again.”