Cuts hurt fight on gambling addiction

Cuts hurt fight on gambling addiction
Advocates say need is growing

WORCESTER — Casino workers made him comfortable.
When they saw Scott playing slots at 3 a.m., the staff at the Connecticut casino comped the rum he was drinking and offered him complimentary concert tickets. Ultimately, they began paying for his hotel rooms.

In the end, Scott, a 51-year-old contractor from Peru, Mass., amassed $58,000 in credit card debt, had to sell off many of his most prized possessions, and was wallowing in depression.

Scott, who would only give his first name, was one of several gambling addicts who spoke yesterday about their addictions and the potential problems the state faces as lawmakers debate whether to expand legalized gambling.

“It’s like opening Pandora’s box,’’ he said. “People are going to suffer the consequences. It’s a mistake.’’

Officials at the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling, which organized yesterday’s annual Massachusetts Conference on Gambling Disorders, said that the campaign to expand gambling comes as lawmakers have proposed cutting their $1 million budget in half.

They said their services will be needed more if the state Senate approves legislation to expand gambling. Last month, the House passed a bill that would license two casinos and up to 750 slots at the state’s four long-struggling racetracks. The legislation is strongly supported by Governor Deval Patrick, whose proposed 2011 budget also cut funding for the Council on Compulsive Gambling by 50 percent.

“It’s unbelievably ironic that at the same time the state is proposing a lot more gambling, it’s proposing drastic cuts in our programs,’’ said Kathleen Scanlan, the council’s executive director, whose organization does not oppose expanding gambling in the state.

If the cuts are part of the final budget, she said, it would mean her staff would be cut in half and that gambling addicts would have less access to treatment.

Officials in Patrick’s office said the cuts reflect the state’s financial crisis. They also said that the governor has proposed a new public health fund for gambling-addiction problems that would amount to 2.5 percent of the new casinos’ gross revenue.

“Unfortunately, the cuts were necessary due to fiscal constraints,’’ said Kofi Jones, a spokeswoman for the Patrick administration. “But expanded gaming does not currently exist in Massachusetts. If it did, the governor has made it clear in his initial proposal that he would only support expanded gaming if public health concerns are appropriately funded.’’

At the conference held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, social workers, researchers, and others who treat gambling addicts said the state should increase funding for the problems associated with gambling if it legalizes the casinos.

Ryan Martin, a research fellow at the Division on Addictions at the Cambridge Health Alliance, said studies show most problems associated with gambling addiction — debt, depression, reckless decisions — usually occur within the first few years after a casino opens. Then, he said, problems subside.

He said that generally only 2 to 3 percent of the population suffers from gambling addiction.

The council estimates that as many as 185,000 Massachusetts residents have experienced gambling problems in their lives.

“The most important time to make services available to this population is at the beginning, when the casinos open,’’ Martin said.

Keith Whyte, executive director of the Washington-based National Council on Problem Gambling, said the state should require the new casinos to disclose their tracking of players, so researchers could better target programs based on how much time the average person spends on a particular game.

He added that the state also should require casinos to use special slot machines that tell players to take breaks or limit how long they can play. He said the state also should limit how much someone could take from a casino ATM machine and how much they could spend there in one day.

“The real emphasis needs to be on prevention,’’ Whyte said. Dennis, 63, a former Polaroid employee from Kingston, opposes the idea of expanding gambling in Massachusetts.

A gambling addict for 20 years who lost more than $100,000 on scratch tickets and other games, he thinks the state will lose more money than it gains from expanding gambling.

“It’s like shooting yourself in the foot or promoting fantasies, especially when they’re cutting funding for gambling addictions,’’ he said.