By John W. Kennedy
A growth industry
Gaining acceptance
New forms of temptation
Turning the tide
State battlegrounds
Gambling is making a determined march to conquer the land. Will
it succeed or will Christians turn back the tide? While most state
legislatures are still clinging to the notion that gambling is beneficial
to the economy, there are signs that some governments have figured
out the cost is too high.
A generation ago, Americans had to seek out places to gamble legally
other than Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Now it’s difficult
to find a place where gambling doesn’t invade our homes, work
and recreational spaces. Winning state lottery numbers flash across
the screen on television at night. Casino billboards beckon drivers
on the highways. Office wagering pools are run on who will win the
NCAA Basketball Tournament or the Super Bowl. Internet advertisements
urge web surfers to try their hand at card games. Video gambling
machines squawk at customers in restaurants and convenience stores.
Pari-mutuel betting, which includes dog racing, horse racing and
jai alai, is legal in 42 states. Lotteries are sponsored by 37 states.
And casinos operate in 26 states, in forms ranging from riverboats
to Native American reservations. While Atlantic City and Las Vegas
still lead in casino revenue, unlikely spots such as Tunica, Miss.;
Lake Charles, La.; and Council Bluffs, Iowa — all with populations
under 100,000 — are not far behind.
A
growth industry
Two decades ago, state governments almost uniformly
served as watchdogs to oppose any form of gambling. Now state legislatures
promote gambling, addicted to the revenues and insensitive to its
negative consequences, according to Valerie Lorenz, 63, executive
director of the Compulsive Gambling Center in Baltimore. Only three
states — Utah, Hawaii and Tennessee — have no legalized
gambling, but some residents there wager electronically.
"You can gamble over the telephone, over the computer, at
the airport, at the train station," Lorenz says.
Lotteries, which started as occasional sweepstakes, gained impetus
in the 1970s with daily drawings. Lotteries remain the most widespread
form of gambling and the only one in which a majority of American
adults have participated. State officials like lotteries because
the games provide the highest profit margins. Americans play the
lottery in various forms — scratch off instant game tickets,
computerized daily lotto numbers picks, video lottery terminal keno
machines — even though it has the worst odds of winning. One
in five Americans plays a lottery game every week.
State governments have convinced the masses to stand in line with
a million-to-one odds of hitting the jackpot. "People would
be much better if they stood in line and saved their money for their
retirement," says Tom Grey, executive director of the National
Coalition Against Legalized Gambling.
States spend a lot of money reinventing games and making humorous
commercials to induce citizens into playing lotteries because of
"jackpot fatigue." Thus, several states band together
to make the prize bigger. In May, the Big Game Jackpot rose to $363
million, the largest in U.S. history. People from seven states participated.
Lines formed at gas stations and convenience stores for several
days before the drawing.
"People used to get excited about $5-million and $10-million
jackpots," says Ronald A. Reno, 35, senior research analyst
with Focus on the Family. "Now people don’t get excited
until it gets over $100 million. So you’ve got this vicious
cycle of constantly having to raise the ante and increase the hype
in the marketing. You reach a threshold, and for the hard-core gambler
what used to excite, no longer does. And you now need to raise the
level of excitement to achieve the same level they experienced a
year or two earlier."
Despite the convenience and pervasiveness of lotteries, it is casinos
that take in the largest chunk of gambling revenues. Regular casinos
account for 40 percent of gambling revenues, while Native American
establishments chip in another 13 percent. State lotteries make
up 33 percent of gambling revenues; pari-mutuel betting, 9 percent;
charitable wagering, 5 percent.
Casinos are the fastest-growing form of gambling. Tribal gambling,
found in two dozen states, has been growing rapidly since 1987,
complicated by the fact that reservations are off limits to state
and local laws. Riverboat casinos, which didn’t exist before
1991, now are located in 11 states. The continued increase in the
number of casinos — more than 800 now — is significant.
Legalized gambling losses totaled $54.4 billion in 1998, more than
double the amount in 1991.
Gaining
acceptance
Gambling has gained respectability after a relaxation of laws. For
instance, Missouri and Illinois dropped requirements last year that
riverboats had to be functional. California voters in March sanctioned
Indian tribes to operate slot machines and card games on reservations.
Candidates and political parties were equally guilty of accepting
more than $14 million in "soft money" from gambling interests
between 1995 and 1999. In May, a former governor was convicted of
extorting nearly $3 million from entrepreneurs seeking riverboat
casino licenses.
States often seek to make gambling more palatable by promising
that funds will be used for public education.
It’s gone beyond the scope of simply being a benign activity
to being a "benevolent activity," Reno says. "Now
it’s ‘gamble for the kids.’ If they can obfuscate
what the activity is and focus on the ‘net benefit,’ it’s
going to be a lot more palatable to the public. It masks the insidious
nature of the activity."
Gambling has also lavished funds on good causes to enlist the support
of leaders. United Way held a Capitol Hill luncheon in February
to honor the casino industry for its contributions to the charity.
The transformation from sinful activity to recreational pursuit
has been successful. In a Gallup Poll last year, only 29 percent
concluded that "gambling is immoral." Three out of four
people agreed that gambling is a form of entertainment "no
better or no worse than other activities."
Yet as gambling becomes more prevalent, so do its ABCs: addiction,
bankruptcy and crime.
Last year the National Gambling Impact Study Commission found that
13 percent of those betting at casinos, racetracks or lottery outlets
are "problem or pathological" gamblers. Another 18 percent
are "at risk" for developing a gambling addiction.
The social price tag related to gambling addiction is staggering,
says Reno. They include such factors as compulsive addicts embezzling
from their employers, abusing their spouses and neglecting their
children.
U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R.-Va.), 61, has been the staunchest gambling
opponent in Congress since his election in 1980, and he says gambling
has the potential to destroy more than families.
"Gambling is an issue that literally can touch every segment
of our society," Wolf says. He sponsored the legislation to
create the national study commission.
Compulsive gambling is an addiction with a potential for rapid
destruction. Bettors can lose their earthly possessions in a matter
of hours. An estimated two-thirds of compulsive gamblers turn to
crime at some time to support their habit or to pay off debts. One
in five gambling addicts attempts suicide.
New
forms of temptation
Internet gambling — which is operated by offshore, unregulated
companies — has been around only since 1995, but is growing
rapidly. Revenues hit $1.2 billion last year. Last November, the
U.S. Senate passed the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act, one of
70 proposals made to Congress by the National Gambling Impact Study
Commission in June 1999. The House this year is working on a similar
bill that would prohibit the use of credit cards for wagers over
the Internet.
More than 700 gambling websites, originating in places such as
Antigua and Australia, try to lure computer users with advertisements
for betting on college football games to playing blackjack. The
legal betting age varies from 18 to 21, depending on the state.
But no laws exist to prevent minors from using credit card numbers
to gamble, and some of the websites have cartoon character graphics
such as the Pink Panther and Betty Boop to attract children.
"Internet gambling is absolutely not regulated," Lorenz
says. "So the person who is making the bet and giving his credit
card has no assurance that if he wins, he will be paid. It is a
one-way street, built on trust. Why would you want to trust someone
who is doing something illegal?"
Lorenz faults legislators for failure to warn young people of the
dangers of online gambling.
"If there were opportunities to buy cocaine or marijuana over
the Internet can you imagine how our law enforcement people and
public policymakers would respond?" she says. "But because
it is gambling it is viewed as a lesser danger."
Youth also are among the biggest partakers of sports betting. Acting
upon another recommendation of the national gambling study panel,
the Senate Commerce Committee voted in April to outlaw bets placed
in Nevada (the only state where such wagering is legal) on Olympic,
college and high school competition. Illegal bookmaking is believed
to make up 97 percent of the betting on college games each year.
Odds are listed in nearly every sports section for what team is
favored to win that day’s contests.
It’s not surprising that technologically savvy teen-agers,
raised in an environment where gambling is not only socially acceptable
but state-sponsored, are twice as likely to develop a gambling addiction
as adults, according to the national study. There are 1.1 million
pathological gamblers ages 12-18.
Teen-age boys typically bet on illegal sports and girls on lotteries,
Lorenz says. Both sexes play poker machines. "As they get into
the college ages we find they are doing a lot of online gambling,
typically in the college library or at home with their computers,"
she says. "They can do this casino gambling and sports betting
over the Internet."
The National Gambling Impact Study Commission discovered that problem
gambling also affects the elderly in disproportionate numbers. "At
first it became apparent that we’re seeing more senior citizen
gamblers, typically, a widow or widower," Lorenz says. "But
in the past year we’ve also been seeing senior citizen couples
where both of them become compulsive gamblers."
Gambling impacts more than teens and the elderly. "We are
seeing more people in their early 30s who have young children and
as a result of their gambling addiction there is child neglect,"
says Lorenz, whose center is connected with the nation’s longest-running
residential treatment program for pathological gamblers. "It
might be abuse, and sometimes even physical abuse, but most often
it’s leaving a child alone for several hours on end."
Turning
the tide
Gambling would be perhaps more widespread if not for the efforts
of Tom Grey of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling.
Since 1992, the 59-year-old former United Methodist Church minister
has traveled the country, mobilizing congregations of various denominations
to fight referenda from much better financed opponents seeking to
introduce gambling in their states.
Grey is more optimistic than in the early 1990s, when state governments
flocked to allow gambling in their states.
"There was no opposition then," Grey says. "It was
the wave of the future, the force of history." He is encouraged
by the national commission study that urges governments to impose
a moratorium on gambling expansion without extensive studies first.
While the study of the nine-member panel, which included Focus
on the Family founder James Dobson, carries no force of law, Grey
contends it provides a powerful signal. "It is a document that
we can use as ammunition," he says. "It’s a national
commission, so the anti-gambling people can’t just say we’re
a bunch of do-gooders and everything we say is anecdotal."
The study has helped to galvanize gambling foes, Grey says. "Not
only have we networked strong opposition, we’ve been able to
do it among liberals and conservatives."
Lorenz agrees that momentum has shifted.
"Communities and anti-gambling forces are saying enough is
enough and we are not just going to stop the increase but we are
going to reverse this legalization of gambling," Lorenz says.
Christians have played key roles in fighting back in South Carolina
and Alabama.
State
battlegrounds
Last October, Alabama voters rejected a referendum to start a state
lottery. Grey, who lives in Rockford, Ill., helped unify clergy
from across the religious spectrum to preach about the immorality
of gambling.
"As in other states, usually the churches provide the troops,"
says Grey, an army infantry commander during the Vietnam War who
likes to use military metaphors. "Right now it’s just
guerrilla warfare. I’m hopeful churches will join as the infantry
for our fight."
In South Carolina in July the state Supreme Court effectively outlawed
the 34,000 video poker machines. The machines had been located in
beauty shops, pizza parlors and bowling alleys.
Some South Carolina Christians voiced opposition because they had
been devastated by gambling. "It wasn’t only ‘the
derelicts of society’ who were having problems," Reno
says. "It was the moms and dads and kids sitting within their
own pews."
Churches in South Dakota are spearheading an effort to remove video
lottery games in a November vote. If the measure passes, 9,000 machines
would be taken out, making South Dakota the first state to curtail
a lottery.
"In South Dakota it’s going to be winner take all,"
Grey says. "If we lose there, it shows that it’s going
to be very difficult to rout gambling. We can stop expansion in
most cases. But to rout it out, it is going to be very hard unless
the church and civic groups enter in."
Much remains to be done to mobilize churches around the country.
A 1999 Gallup Poll indicated that 58 percent of those claiming that
religion is "very important" to them have bought a lottery
ticket and 32 percent have gambled at a casino. Reno says many Christians
don’t rate gambling as harmful as some other behaviors.
"If you go into a conservative evangelical church and talk
about homosexuality or abortion, you’ve got 90 percent of the
people with you," Reno says. "If you go in and talk about
gambling, it’s about 70 percent and the others are saying,
‘What’s the big deal?’ "
The ubiquity of gambling is beneficial in one regard, Reno believes.
"The more firsthand knowledge they have, the more their convictions
are strengthened. The more people are exposed to the truth about
legalized gambling, the more negative their reaction to it becomes."
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John W. Kennedy is general editor of the Pentecostal
Evangel.
