I'm writing to encourage you to attend an important national conference on government-sponsored gambling being held this summer titled "Gambling Addiction and Society: Thinking Anew."
Several of the most prominent scholars in the nation will be presenting including: MIT's Dr. Natasha Schull, author of the nationally-acclaimed book on slot machines titled Addiction By Design; Baylor University economist Dr. Earl Grinols, the country's top expert about the costs of sponsoring casinos as public policy (commercial and tribal); and Institute for American Values scholar Dr. Barbara Whitehead, the principal investigator of the 2013 national report, Why Casinos Matter: Thirty-One Evidence-Based Propositions from the Health and Social Sciences, which presented the mounting independent evidence that government’s public policy of promoting casinos is contributing to the unfairness and inequality in our nation.
The conference will be held on July 24-25 at the Boca Raton Resort & Club in Boca Raton, FL and the convener is the Institute for American Values, a national, nonpartisan think tank based in Manhattan. The full details of the conference are pasted at the bottom of this email or can be found at this link. Registration is $99 and includes lunch on Friday, 7/25.
What makes the conference especially newsworthy nationally is Whitehead will publicly release her latest and maybe most important report The Incredible Shrinking Problem: Gambling and the Politics of Expert Knowledge.
Here are some suggestions to consider for travel logistics: The closest airports are West Palm Beach Airport and Ft. Lauderdale Airport. If it is cheaper for you, Miami airport is a little bit further but is still an option. For lodging, you have at least a couple of good options at different price points. You can stay either at the conference site, The Boca Raton Resort & Club for the group discount rate at $157 a night plus tax (to make a reservation, call 888-543-1277 and ask for the BEACHCOMBER SYMPOSIUM), or you can stay about a seven minute drive away at the La Quinta Hotel where SPG blocked a group of rooms at $65 a night with free continental breakfast.
If you're going to stay at La Quinta, you need to call this number to book your room (800) 642-4239 and provide this Group Booking Number: GRXGUD. You can stay through the weekend at the group rate at either location.
Hope to see you there on July 24 & 25.
If you support our mission and work, please participate by contributing $10 or more today to help sustain it.
With gratitude,
Les
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Les Bernal
"End the unfairness and inequality created by government-sponsorship of casinos and lotteries."
Gambling Addiction and Society: Thinking Anew
A National Symposium at the Boca Raton Resort & Club in Boca Raton, Florida
July 24-25, 2014
July 24-25, 2014
Why this Meeting?
In recent decades, two trends have shaped our understanding of gambling’s relationship to the larger society.
The first is gambling’s entry into the mainstream. No longer confined to the desert towns of Nevada and the beach town of Atlantic City, legalized gambling – featuring its main institution, the casino, and its main device, the slot machine – is widely popular and spreading rapidly across the country.
The second trend is that research on problem gambling has become largely organized and funded by the gambling industry itself. For a comparison, imagine an America in which most research on cigarette smoking is commissioned and funded by tobacco companies.
These trends have helped to transform our overall view of gambling. Indeed, today’s paradigm is a radical departure from previous understandings. Even the venerable word “gambling,” which suggested a social problem, has been largely replaced by “gaming,” which suggests a harmless form of entertainment that can be enjoyed by everyone.
Well – says our current paradigm – almost everyone. Today’s dominant understanding also stipulates that a small fraction of Americans – about one percent, we are frequently told – suffer from addiction to gambling. The paradigm concedes that persons harmed by this disease require active assistance, which today’s “gaming” industry, through its indirect funding of treatment programs and direct funding of research, willingly provides.
The purpose of the symposium on “Gambling Addiction and Society” is to question this dominant paradigm at the root level. We will do so by bringing together leading scholars to raise basic questions in a context of open, interdisciplinary exchange.
- Does “one percent” best describe the scale of U.S. problem gambling today?
- Is pathological gambling essentially a private problem – located in the troubled mind of the addict – or are there important social dimensions?
- Do modern slot machines foster addiction? If so, what are the implications?
- Will the size of gambling as a social problem stay roughly constant regardless of gambling expansion, or will more casinos and more slot machines mean a larger social problem?
- Is current scholarship on gambling adequate to the subject?
Who Should Attend?
The symposium is for scholars and researchers interested in gambling; professionals in the fields of addiction treatment and recovery, public health, and mental health; and leaders and professionals in government and public policy.
9 CEU's of advanced training in clinical skills for addiction treatment services, chemical dependency and behavioral health problems are available.
Program
Thursday, July 24
4:00
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Registration Opens
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5:30
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A Conversation with Sam Skolnik
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Sam Skolnik, the author of the highly praised 2011 book,High Stakes: The Rising Cost of America’s Gambling Addiction will provide an overview of gambling in America today and answer questions.
Mr. Skolnik approaches the topic personally as well as professionally. Regarding this conference, he wrote to the organizers:
Though my book is not a memoir, I think it’s important to tell the conferees in Miami some of my personal story. I’m an avid poker player. I’m good at the game. Yet my gambling has at times become a destructive force in my life. My hope is that my passion for the topic, both as a gambler and long-time journalist who studies and writes about gambling expansion, can contribute to what you’ll be discussing at this conference. | |
7:00
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Refreshments / Social / Book Signing
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Friday, July 25
9:00
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Why Do We Come Together?
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9:15
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What Kind of Problem is Gambling?
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10:30
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Break
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10:45
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Is Gambling a Public Health Issue?
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12
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Luncheon / Keynote: Do the Machines Matter?
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1:30
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What Does Gambling Addiction Cost?
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2:30
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Break
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2:45
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Is the Current Paradigm Global?
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3:45
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Is There a Next Step?
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4:15
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Adjourn
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vvvv
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