Massachusetts will be LUCKY too, when voters REPEAL THE CASINO DEAL!
N.H. lucky to have dodged gambling bullet
When I was very little, probably 5 or 6, my family had a camp on Lake Memphremagog. It was a real camp with paper-thin walls and a wonderful marble sink that someone had salvaged. One night, a game of penny-ante was organized and even though I was very young, I was allowed to play. I had 75 cents, 50 cents from my allowance plus 25 cents that I had saved.
Of course, I lost all my pennies. I was dumbfounded at the end of the game when the adults did not give me back my money. They asked, if I had won, would I have given back my winnings? If I wanted to play, I had to be prepared to lose as well as win. That forever cured me of gambling.
Do you notice that when you are curious, you might do something you would not otherwise do?
Another election cycle is ramping up and the perennial question of casinos is back. I got to wondering about casinos and who goes to them, so I went down to Foxwoods on a recent Friday night. Foxwoods is very big with more than 6,300 slot machines and almost 400 gaming tables. In Fox Tower alone there are 1,400 slot machines and 825 hotel rooms. At full, double-occupancy, that is almost one slot machine per person.
So I was surprised to see the casino half empty. It was, however, full of cigarette and cigar smoke.
After wandering around for about two hours, I came away with a headache and sore throat. There are non-smoking areas in the casinos, but as you know, smoke does not stay in the smoking area. In one of the resorts, there were two dedicated non-smoking rooms. The slot machine area was completely empty and the area with the gaming tables had been taken over by a bus load of Chinese tourists hosted by native Chinese speakers provided by the casino. They were the only ones who seemed to be having a good time. I walked around to all the casinos and found them mostly empty. I was prepared for unbecoming, drunken, behavior. I was not prepared for the place to be so dead on a Friday night.
The people who were playing the slots looked like they were on life support or needed to be. Many people who play the slots purchase a plastic cord and they attach one end to their clothing and the other end to their credit card, which they insert into the machine while playing, so that they will not inadvertently leave the card behind. It reminded me of an IV tube, however, instead of delivering life-giving nutrients, the machine is sucking all their money out of their wallets. And with these modern slot machines, there is no arm to pull, no lights to blink when you win, and no money pouring into a paper bucket. Today, all a person has to do is sit and push one button, over and over. When you are done with one machine, or have lost all your money, you press another button which prints out a slip of paper that you can insert into another machine, or cash out, if you actually win something. The slots all do the same thing, but they have different "themes." You can play one with a Sex in the City theme where instead of cherries, shoes pop up. If you like seashells, crabs and various fish, perhaps the Little Mermaid is more your style. Perhaps Willie Wonka, Titanic or Monopoly. There is a themed slot machine for everyone.
After my wanderings, I headed back to Fox Tower where I was staying, when people appeared out of nowhere. It was the crowd leaving the Yanni concert. The concert venue holds about 4,000 seats and it seemed they must have had a pretty large crowd. But these people were not there to gamble. The had no interest in the casinos. They were heading back to their rooms or heading to their cars. I stopped at an on-site restaurant that was about a third full. I asked the waiter if this was typical and he said the place had just "filled up" following the concert. Before that, the restaurant was empty. The waiter turned out to be full of information. He told me the wait staff is trained not to ask customers such questions as: How are you doing? Did you have a good night? Are you having fun? According to him, management knows people losing money are not having a good time and they do not want to remind their customers of that. Management knows a great deal. There are no windows in any of the casinos because they do not want you to know what time of day or night it is. They are watching you closely and when you start to lose, someone comes over with a complimentary drink. Lose a little more and vouchers for free food appear. Lose even more and they will comp you a room for the night. Losers are their best customers and they will do whatever they can to keep losers losing.
My thoughts on my experience are twofold. First, we all know casinos are designed to take money from you and not to give it to you. I had not realized the extent and the precision with which management of casinos manipulate their customers. And from the look of it, most of these people did not have much to lose in the first place. It seems highly immoral to me to raise money on the backs of people who can least afford it.
Second, the large crowd I did see was not there to gamble at all. They were there for Yanni! The casino did not draw them in; the live performance did. Yanni was also responsible for them staying for a late-night bite.
And now we are learning the big benefits that were supposed to line the coffers of the states hosting casinos are rapidly disappearing. Recent reports suggest gambling as a way of raising government revenue is not what it is touted to be. Casinos are closing. Four out of 12 casinos in Atlantic City are shutting down. Jobs promised are now jobs gone. Foxwoods, the second largest gambling venue in the country, is in serious trouble. According to the New York Times, Foxwoods' debt is about $2.3 billion.
When this happens, casinos leave behind some serious social issues. According to Dr. David Phillips, a sociologist from University of California-San Diego, Atlantic City has "abnormally high suicide levels for visitors and residents (that) appeared only after gambling casinos were opened."
Sam Skolnik, author of "High Stakes: The Rising Cost of America's Gambling Addiction," as reported by Jessie Bennett, editor of Beacon Broadside, said "in a recent 10-year period, there was a 50 percent rise in the number of GA (Gamblers Anonymous) chapters around the country. This coincides with an explosion in the amount of legalized gambling, spearheaded by the casino industry, both commercial and Indian casinos like Foxwoods. It would take a huge state of denial to not see that these two trends are directly related."
We should consider ourselves lucky to have dodged the gambling bullet this long. It seems clear that gambling is not the answer from a financial perspective nor from a social one. Surely we can find a way to raise funds in a manner more socially responsible and morally uplifting than creating a soul-sucking behemoth that preys on human frailty. Surely we are a state that seeks to nurture the human spirit and not destroy it.
Isn't it the hardened gambler who says all he needs is one big win to be set financially? I wonder who is the bigger gambler: the people in the casinos or the state, placing all its chips on that one, continually shrinking, square. I would like to ask our legislators who still support a gambling initiative, even after all the evidence suggests it is a bad idea, isn't it time to drop that bone?
Kate Murray of New Castle serves on civic, arts and governmental boards at the state and local level. She can be reached at dynportsmouth@gmail.com.
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