“The State Gambling Addiction”
August 20th, 2012
Steven Malanga examines state gambling in his piece on City Journal. Most states now have some form of gambling, either casinos, horse racing, a lottery, or video gaming, with the assumption that it is a revenue generator and an aid to economic development. What is going mostly unobserved is gambling addiction and its cost, monetarily and in human suffering. And as a source of revenue, gambling may be a mixed blessing at best.
“A second form of gambling, casinos, began to spread in the late seventies, pitched as both a budget fix and as an economic-development tool. Atlantic City was the first to go this route.”
“Perhaps the most unsettling statistic associated with legal gambling—obscured by media clichés about how “nearly everyone” gambles occasionally in America—is the inordinately large share of gambling revenue that comes from problem gamblers.”
“So addictive are these machines, according to Kevin Horrigan, a video-game designer and computer-science expert at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, that two-thirds of those seeking help for gambling addictions in the province report that their principal gambling activity is using video slots.”
http://www.likelicorice.com/2012/link/the-state-gambling-addiction/
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