Invitation to National Conference on Govt-Sponsored Casinos and Lotteries

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

____________

Les Bernal

National Director,

Stop Predatory Gambling  
                                                        

"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

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	Registration Opens
5:30	A Conversation with Sam Skolnik
	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	Refreshments / Social / Book Signing

Friday, July 25

9:00	Why Do We Come Together?
	Anthony G. Foster, Beachcomber Family Center for Addiction Recovery David Blankenhorn, Institute for American Values
9:15	What Kind of Problem is Gambling?
	Presentation by Dr. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, author of the new IAV report, The Incredible Shrinking Problem: Gambling and the Politics of Expert Knowledge Open Discussion
10:30	Break
10:45	Is Gambling a Public Health Issue?
	Presentation by Theodore R. Marmor, Yale University professor emeritus of public policy and the author of many books and articles on health policy and welfare state politics and policy in North America and Western Europe Respondent: Dr. Kathleen Kovner Kline, the chief medical officer of The Consortium, a community mental health center in Philadelphia, a faculty affiliate at the University of Pennsylvania, and the lead author of Hardwired to Connect: The New Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities Open Discussion
12	Luncheon / Keynote: Do the Machines Matter?
	Presentation by Dr. Natasha Dow Schull, MIT professor of anthropology and author ofAddiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas Open Discussion
1:30	What Does Gambling Addiction Cost?
	Presentation by Dr. Earl Grinols, Baylor professor of economics and author of Gambling in America: Costs and Benefits Open Discussion
2:30	Break
2:45	Is the Current Paradigm Global?
	Presentation by Rebecca Cassidy, professor of anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London and the principle investigator of the 2014 European Research Council funded report, Fair Game: Producing Gambling Research Open Discussion
3:45	Is There a Next Step?
	Anthony G. Foster, Beachcomber Family Center for Addiction Recovery David Blankenhorn, Institute for American Values
4:15	Adjourn

Quick Links  An American Declaration on Government and Gambling  Online Store  SPG in the Media  Take Action  A Failed Government Policy  Lies vs. Facts  Background Reading  Share Your Story  Donate To The Mission

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Casinos prey on elderly residents

My Turn: Casinos prey on elderly residents

By PAUL DAVIES
For the Monitor

Wednesday, March 12, 2014
(Published in print: Thursday, March 13, 2014)        

 

As New Hampshire lawmakers debate whether to legalize casinos, they should think about Kensington Police Chief Michael Sielicki’s mother.

 

Sielicki’s mom moved to Arizona after her husband died in 2004. At the time, she had no mortgage on her home, no car payments and no credit-card debt. She had sizeable cash assets, thanks to the sale of three other properties, stock market investments and Social Security.

 

But then Sielicki’s mother started to go to the local casino. She enjoyed the free lunch, and she played slot machines and later table games. Initially, Sielicki thought his mom’s casino outings were innocent fun. Two years ago, Sielicki visited his mother and they went to the casino.

 

He was alarmed that the valet, doorman and casino workers knew his mom by her first name. Several asked about her pets. Eventually Sielicki learned his mom had lost tens of thousands of dollars gambling. Most of her savings was gone, and she now borrows money from family to pay basic expenses.

 

“It was clear these people befriended my mom and preyed on here,” Sielicki said.

Sielicki’s mom is not alone. Many casinos target seniors. Bus trips, free buffets and discount medicine are just some of the ways casinos lure in seniors. Nearly half the casino visitors in 2012 were over age 50.

 

University of Pennsylvania addiction researcher David Oslin found that 70 percent of seniors surveyed had gambled the previous year and that one in 10 bet more than he or she could afford to lose.

 

Fayetta Martin, an assistant professor at Wayne State University, has studied how gambling addiction is associated with other mental health and substance issues. She said the casino industry enabled the problems.

 

“During my research and visits to the casinos, I noticed that the casino was supplying older adults with scooters and wheelchairs,” Martin said in a 2009 interview with Social Work Today magazine.

 

“Many even provided oxygen. In the bathroom, there were boxes for diabetics to dispose needles.

 

Older adults told me stories of how the casinos always remember their birthday, and if they stayed away too long, the casino would send them a card saying that they were missed.”

 

New Hampshire’s graying population makes it is a target market for casinos. By 2030, almost one-third of Granite Staters will be over age 65, according to the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy.

 

Casinos are being billed as tourist destinations, but unlike Las Vegas most of the gamblers at a New Hampshire casino will come from within the state. Yes, New Hampshire will generate tax revenue from casino gambling. But that money will come mainly from the pockets of residents, including many seniors on fixed incomes.

 

Studies show that anywhere from 30 to 60 percent of slots players are repeat and problem gamblers.

 

The casino industry argues the addiction rate is 3 to 5 percent. But that figure is for the overall population, not casino customers. Even an addiction rate of 5 percent would equal more than 66,000 New Hampshire residents.

What lawmaker would enact a policy knowing that tens of thousands of residents would become addicted and face financial ruin as a result?

Sadly, some elected officials think gambling is a good public policy. Former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, who led the effort to legalize slots in his state, said casinos were a bright spot for many seniors “who lead very gray lives.”

“They don’t see their sons and daughters very much,” Rendell said during a 2006 speech. “They don’t have much social interaction. There’s not a whole lot of good things that happen in their month.

But if you put them on the bus, they’re excited. They’re happy. They have fun. They see bright lights.

They hear music. They pull that slot machine, and with each pull they think they have a chance to win. It’s unbelievable what brightness and cheer it brings to older Pennsylvanians. Unbelievable.”

New Hampshire can do better than bet on its residents to lose money. Lawmakers have a duty to protect vulnerable citizens, including the elderly. Legalizing a casino will encourage many seniors like Sielicki’s mom to become addicted. That would be unbelievable.

 

(Paul Davies is the Maggie Walker Fellow at the Institute for American Values, a nonpartisan think tank in New York, where he edits a gambling blog and is the author of “Stacked Deck: Inside New York’s Dishonest Casino Plan.”)

UPDATE: This story was updated on March 13, 2014, to correct Police Chief Michael Sielicki’s town.

 

 

http://www.concordmonitor.com/home/11100719-95/my-turn-casinos-prey-on-elderly-residents

New report reveals severe impact of casinos on senior citizens

I am emailing you an important new report about the impact that government sponsorship of casinos is having on senior citizens. The report titled "Seniors in Casino Land: Tough Luck for Older Americans" was written by Amy Ziettlow, a scholar at the Institiute for American Values. You can download the report as a free PDF here. Amy also wrote an op-ed summarizing the report that was published in last Sunday's Tampa Tribune.

Please read it and share it as widely as you can, especially with opinion leaders in your region of the country including journalists, newspaper editors, public officials, business leaders, civic groups and non-profits.

When you share the report, tell them this: all citizens have a right to fairness and equality of opportunity, and that includes older Americans. Government sponsorship of casinos and lotteries produces unfairness and inequality. It is a public policy that has failed and we need to phase it out. No American should be rendered expendable by our own government.

If you support our mission and work, please participate by contributing $10 or more today to help sustain it.

With gratitude,

Les

____________

Les Bernal

National Director

Stop Predatory Gambling

"Ending the unfairness and inequality produced by government sponsorship of casinos and lotteries."

Quick Links An American Declaration on Government and Gambling Online Store SPG in the Media Take Action A Failed Government Policy Lies vs. Facts Background Reading Share Your Story Donate To The Mission

Casinos: America's New Senior Centers

PR Newswire

NEW YORK, Feb. 24, 2014

NEW YORK, Feb. 24, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Older Americans, once content with church bingo, are flocking to casinos to play the slots. Since the mid-1970s, the number of seniors visiting casinos has more than doubled, a rate surpassing other age groups. In 2012, more than half of people visiting a casino were age fifty or older.

The growing popularity of casino gambling among older adults is contributing to increases in problem gambling among the nation's aging population, according to Seniors in Casino Land, a newly released report by Amy Ziettlow, an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values, a New York City think tank.

Problem gambling among vulnerable older women is strongly linked to the proliferation of the modern slot-machine-dominated casino.

"The new face of problem gambling in America is a senior woman," according to research cited in the report.

The report is based on Ziettlow's fieldwork and interviews with older casino gamblers.
Among its findings:

• Slots are favored by over seventy-five percent of older Americans.
• Slots and similar non-strategic electronic gambling devices rank as the most highly addictive and highly profitable of all gambling games.
• Slots use light, sound, and repetitive motion to induce a hypnotic trance that makes time and money evaporate. Players talk of disappearing into the machine.
• Slot machines are linked to severe addiction among older women gamblers. Women tend to gamble for escape from emotional pain and the burdens of caregiving rather than for the thrill of competition or the quest for big wins.
• Slot machines are harmful to the aging brain. The overload of stimuli from the machines – pulsating light and engineered sound effects - along with the lack of natural light in the casino, can contribute to disorientation, mental confusion and diminished cognitive function. People on medication or suffering from memory problems are especially vulnerable to such harms.
• Slot machines exploit the emotional needs of older people. For lonely, bored, and socially isolated seniors, slot machines and similar electronic devices provide a temporary form of escape.

To read the report: http://www.americanvalues.org/catalog/pdfs/seniors-in-casino-land.pdf
To read Ziettlow's op-ed in The Tampa Tribune: http://tbo.com/list/news-opinion-commentary/the-harmful-x2014-even-deadly-x2014-effects-of-casino-gambling-20140223/
About Amy Ziettlow: http://www.americanvalues.org/about/bio.php?pid=9
More on IAV at: http://www.americanvalues.org/
Amy Ziettlow will be speaking at a public forum at Stetson University College of Law on Thursday, February 27, 12:00 pm. The address: 1700 N Tampa St, Tampa, FL 33602
SOURCE Institute for American Values

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1753624#ixzz2uLErTekP

FACTS: Don't Gamble Revere!

Loretta LaCentra

According to a recent study by the Institute for American Values, a nonprofit think tank based in New York, the casino explosion is having a profound impact on our society. Among the study’s findings:

• Casino gambling has moved from the margins to the mainstream of American life.

• The new casinos are primarily filled with modern, highly-addictive slot machines and cater overwhelmingly to middle and low rollers who live within an hour away, return frequently, and play the ...slots.

• Casinos depend on pathological and problem gamblers for their revenue base, with these troubled individuals providing 40-60 percent of slot machine profits.

• Living close to a casino increases the chances of developing a gambling addiction.

• Casinos constitute a regressive tax that hits low-income people the hardest, thereby contributing to economic inequality in America.

• The long-term costs of the new casinos exceed their benefits by as much as 3-1.

The new regional and local casinos, the study concludes, drain wealth from communities, weaken nearby businesses and reduce civic participation, family stability, and other forms of social capital that are at the heart of a successful community.

 

 

 

Gambling hurts poor; voters must repeal law. It’s inevitable.

Gambling hurts poor; voters must repeal law

IT IS no surprise that out-of-state, multibillion dollar casino interests are spending huge sums to block Massachusetts citizens from voting on a casino repeal (“Casino firms to fight repeal effort,” Page A1, Jan. 27).

What is also no surprise is the mounting pile of independent evidence revealing that government policies promoting casinos are contributing to unfairness and inequality in our nation. It is harming health, draining wealth from people in the lower ranks of the income distribution, and contributing to economic inequality. These are among the findings of recent report from the Council on Casinos, an independent group of scholars convened by the Institute for American Values, a nonpartisan think tank.

Casinos spend billions of dollars on lawyers, polls, public health research, donations to influential nonprofits, lobbying, media relations, and advertising. But despite this unparalleled spending, they cannot change the ironclad fact that casinos produce unfairness and inequality.

It’s not a matter of if casinos will be repealed in Massachusetts, but when. It’s inevitable.

 

Les Bernal

National director
Stop Predatory Gambling
Lawrence

 

 

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/letters/2014/02/09/gambling-hurts-poor-mass-voters-must-repeal-casino-law/YN7snkJ06eWMGtuUDV1s2M/story.html

 

 

Portsmouth courts social ill

Portsmouth courts social ill
The Virginian-Pilot
December 15, 2013

There are any number of good reasons, especially in Portsmouth, to fight the huge fees coming for the Downtown and Midtown tunnels: The regressive nature of the tolls; the further atomization of a fragmented region; the precedent they set for a community defined by river crossings.

But replacing one complex set of social ills with the ones caused by gambling is perhaps the worst solution floated so far.

State Sen. Louise Lucas is, once again, pushing for Portsmouth to accept casino gambling. Last year, she promised that gambling revenue would allow Portsmouth to lower its property tax rate. This year, she claims it would allow Portsmouth to cut the Elizabeth River tolls due to begin in February.

In reality, it would burden an already burdened city with an industry that takes a horrifying toll on its host.

Today's casinos, according to a study panel convened by the Institute for American Values (http://www.americanvalues.org/) "are affecting our health, our economics, our politics, our ideas and social values, and perhaps even our sense of who we are as a people and what obligations we have toward one another. [Casinos] appear to be connected in important ways to the rise of American inequality."

The IAV panel - the Council on Casinos - compares the rise of local gambling with the spread of payday lenders and fast-food franchises.

Modern food is carefully engineered to make us crave it. If you give in to that craving too often, it will destroy your health. Modern casinos are engineered to make us crave the thrill they create. If you give in to that craving too often, it can destroy your financial and emotional health.

Unlike destination casinos, with their table games and vacation crowds, "regional casinos" depend on repeat visits by nearby habitual gamblers. The casinos depend almost wholly on slot machines - sophisticated computers manipulated to separate gamblers from their money.

People with gambling problems account for "40 to 60 percent of slot machine revenues," according to the IAV report, entitled "Why Casinos Matter." Casual players - which the casinos claim to target - produce a paltry 4 percent of revenue, according to a Canadian study. Indeed, according to the IAV report, people within 10 miles of a casino are twice as likely to have a gambling problem.

The nonprofit Institute for American Values aims "to renew civil society." It brings together all kinds of thinkers from all kinds of perspectives to consider big issues affecting America. Its focus at the moment is on bolstering the institution of marriage, invigorating thrift and strengthening shared values.

For the report, the Council on Casinos reviewed a number of studies, many of them done abroad.

Reliable data on gambling in America has long been difficult to find. There is little research financed by anyone other than the industry, and the rise of regional casinos is a relatively new phenomenon.

The IAV's report - while also urging more and better research - found that in addition to harm to gamblers, casinos do serious damage to communities, lowering property values, weakening nearby businesses and redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich.

Portsmouth already has the lowest per capita income in Hampton Roads and one of the highest poverty rates. More than 40 percent of the city's property belongs to entities that don't pay taxes. But the deleterious impact of gaming extends far beyond any city's borders.

Gambling puts a state in the hypocritical position of needing the revenue while having the responsibility to protect citizens from exploitation. Virginia faced the same dilemma on tobacco.

Because the commonwealth's financial health depended on the industry, it was late and begrudging in taking steps to regulate cigarettes and recoup the massive social costs of smoking.

Virginia - and its lawmakers - should do everything they can to avoid a similar mistake with gambling.

Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe and lawmakers have pledged to search for a way to lower the tolls on the Midtown and Downtown tunnels. They are likely to find that task difficult given the sweetheart terms of the deal with Elizabeth River Crossings. Still, that effort should continue, even as lawmakers send Lucas' gambling proposal to oblivion.

The tolls at the Midtown and Downtown tunnels - $1.84 for passenger vehicles and $7.36 for trucks at rush hour - will affect business and settlement patterns across Hampton Roads, changing where people live and work and play. They will change this place for generations to come.

The terrible and well-understood social costs of gambling are about the only things that make those tolls look harmless.


http://hamptonroads.com/2013/12/portsmouth-courts-social-ill