We haven't finished paying for Casino Capitalism that caused a global implosion and we're supposed to support an industry that profits only because it creates addiction and degrades its patrons? Not!
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Communities with slot parlors by any name, whether it's a slot parlor, racino, casinos or the impressive sounding "Destination Resort" bring increased crime, increased bankruptcies, family destruction, diminished local small businesses, and all the negatives communities shun. The evidence is there for all to see. What more do we need?
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No one wants them in their backyards, including Mr. Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr.:
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"If someone were to come along and tell me that they want to put a casino in Virginia where I live, I would probably work very, very hard against it, so as the saying goes..not in my back yard."
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Rev. Shawn Merithew said it pretty well --ALABAMA VOICES: Weigh human costs
By Shawn Merithew
It is not often that I decide to ascend my soapbox to deal with issues that are being debated in the halls of our secular government. My first and greatest reason for this is that proclaiming salvation in Christ is the biblical method of changing society for the better. Although this is the primary way believers are to engage our culture, there is still value in letting our distinctively Christian voices be heard on moral issues that the Bible directly addresses.
That is why we should let our voices be heard on the issue of gambling. Gambling is an industry in America that victimizes families and poor people in the name of entertainment and tax revenue. It fosters an addiction based upon human greed where the promise of quick, abundant wealth is continually communicated and only very rarely fulfilled.
In fact, as it regards the particular issue here in Alabama, addiction counselors have called video slot machines the crack cocaine of the gambling industry because they are so addictive.
Gambling is bad economic policy. Gambling is a form of regressive taxation that is unaccountable to voters. Studies have shown that the poor and uneducated tend to gamble at a higher rate and with a much greater proportion of their income than the middle class, the rich, and the well-educated.
Studies have proven that when casinos open, other local businesses suffer and often close as both discretionary and necessary income is funneled into gaming and profits are sent out of state.
According to John Warren Kindt, in his statement before Congress in 1994, "For every one dollar of revenue generated by gambling, taxpayers lose three dollars in increased criminal justice costs, social welfare expenses, regulatory costs, and increased infrastructure expenditures." In the current economy, the ratio is closer to five dollars lost for every dollar of revenue.
Gambling increases crime. The Department of Justice and the National Institute for Justice have found significant links between gambling, crime and drug use.
A 2004 study by E. L. Grinols at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that counties with casinos had notably higher crime rates than non-casino counties. A University of Nebraska study by John Jejkal in 2000 concluded that problem gambling is as much a risk factor for domestic violence as alcohol abuse.
Gambling destroys homes and families and children. SMR Research Corp. has called gambling "the single fastest-growing driver of bankruptcy." Gambling-related bankruptcies in metro Detroit increased by as much as 40-fold within 18 months of the opening of Casino Windsor, just across the Detroit River.
Three years after casinos were legalized in the small town of Deadwood, S.D., felony crimes had increased by 40 percent, child abuse had increased by 42 percent, and domestic violence assaults had risen 80 percent. In Indiana, a review of the state's gaming commission records revealed that 72 children were found abandoned on casino premises during a 14-month period.
Gambling ruins marriages and lives. In the National Gambling Impact Study, done at the University of Chicago in 1999, they found that the lifetime divorce rate for problem gamblers was 39.5 percent and for pathological gamblers it was 53.5 percent; for non-gamblers, it was only 18.2 percent.
Dr. Rachel Volberg, president of Gemini Research, has noted, "Suicide attempts among pathological gamblers are higher than for any other addiction and second only to suicide attempt rates among individuals with major affective disorders, schizophrenia, and a few major hereditary disorders."
It is these facts that many of our state legislators are ignoring as they push for this constitutional amendment in favor of gambling. I attended the public hearing at the State House on Feb. 9, and I was honestly surprised at how little attention is being given to the human consequences of gambling as this matter is being recklessly forced upon the good people of Alabama. As evidenced by the facts above, when gambling is legalized in a community or state, an ever-growing tide of human wreckage ensues and the economic situation of the populace worsens.
I share the concern to bring jobs to our state in this down economy, but what service have we done to the people of Alabama if we knowingly increase crime, knowingly depress local businesses, and knowingly destroy thousands and thousands of families to gain a few hundred jobs?
It seems that our legislators simply don't care about their constituents. When it comes to counseling the addicts, mending the marriages, caring for the children, and helping the poor reassemble the pieces of their lives, it will be pastors like me who are left to clean up their mess.
Our politicians will be far removed from the wreckage, sitting in their ivory towers in the state capital, fighting over how to spend the revenue they have gleaned from ruined lives.
Rev. Shawn Merithew is pastor of Morningview Baptist Church in Montgomery.
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