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Printed from The Vanier Institute of the Family's website at www.vifamily.ca. © 2007.
Gambling with our (Kids’) Futures: TABLE OF CONTENTS
Luck, let a gentleman see When Nathan Detroit crooned these words to his elusive Lady in the 1948 musical Guys and Dolls, he was pinning his hopes on the racetrack. But if Nathan wanted to try his luck in Canada these days, he’d be almost dizzy with the array of possibilities. As of 2004, he could find 145,000 legal places to place a bet in Canada. These include:
The governments’ profits are far more dazzling than most Canadians realize. In 2003/04, government-run gambling rang up a gross profit of $13 billion, an increase of $700 million from the reported profits of the year before. Of that, $6.4 billion was net profit for the provinces, with more than $440 million earmarked for charitable grants. (1) Gambling’s image makeover from hidden vice to sanctioned entertainment involves a heavy emphasis on its apparent economic benefits: more tax dollars without having to hike taxes, more money for charities and more employment. The social costs of raising revenue from gambling however are not nearly as well-known, Certainly, the state’s involvement in a previously illegal activity with an addictive potential raises a host of questions that beg to be explored. To what extent are governments betting on gambling? What are the odds that gambling is, as they suggest, good for our culture’s economic health and our civic identities? What are the stakes? The focus of this paper, however, is a more specific one, namely to examine whether gambling today is an important issue for Canada’s families. Is its impact significant enough for gambling to be thought of as a family policy issue? In an attempt to answer these questions, this 2006 addition to the Contemporary Family Trends series will consider some of the most salient gambling research being done in Canada and, whenever possible, use a societal as well as a pathological lens to hone in on the gambling phenomenon. Setting the Cultural and Social Scene: Gambling Past and Present
If you bet on a horse, that's gambling. If you bet you can make three spades, that's entertainment. If you bet cotton will go up three points, that's business. See the difference? In 1892, the Criminal Code of Canada declared a complete ban on all gambling activities, But as Suzanne Morton points out in her social history At Odds: Gambling and Canadians, 1919-1969, the law of the land and the actual behaviour of the populace didn’t always coincide. The rich had their private race tracks and gambling clubs while the working classes indulged in football pools, thronged the bingo parlours and helped bookies make a comfortable living. Still, the “official” social consensus was that the gambling world was populated by colourful, sometimes dangerous, characters operating on the shady side of the law, a world which upright citizens, devoted to the virtues of thrift and hard work, would be well advised to avoid. So what has helped to shift Canadian perceptions of gambling over the past century from a sin to a vice to an entertainment? One watershed decision was the 1969 Criminal Code amendment which allowed provincial governments to run ticket lotteries and sweepstakes. In 1985, provincial governments were further permitted to “conduct and manage” computer and video gaming devices such as slot machines and VLTs (video lottery terminals) and in 1989, Calgary hosted “Cash Casino”, the first year-round charitable casino. Professor Garry Smith of the University of Alberta, who has been studying gambling for 25 years, examined the role of governments in a presentation to the Governing the Gambling Industry: New Directions Seminar sponsored by the Key Centre on Ethics, Law and Justice at Australia’s Griffith University in January 2003. (2) He pointed out that “Early gambling grew organically out of the local community; today’s gambling did not appear because of citizen demand but was generally imposed on the populace by governments….Modern commercial gambling has been sanitized and legitimated because of the involvement of governments and publicly traded corporations….Governments attempt to ‘cool out the marks’ first by saying that the money goes to good causes (even when the lion’s share goes into general revenue) and by saying that gambling is only entertainment, only a harmless amusement.” When it comes to cashing in on this financial bonanza, governments are not alone. The entertainment industry too has been quick to see potential profits in the increased legitimization and visibility of gambling in the social and cultural landscape. The World Series of Poker has been such a huge draw on television that other specialty channels and networks have been scrambling to follow suit with their own televised tournaments. The new frontier of Internet gambling hosts sites such as MySportsbook.com, a sportsbook, casino and poker room traded publicly on the London Stock Exchange. And in November 2005, the CRTC granted a broadcast licence to specialty channel Gambling TV. The new channel will compete with the already existing Casino and Gaming TV Canada network (CGTV) which bills itself, somewhat breathlessly, as “your 24 hour VIP pass to the international world of PLAY… where the glamour … the glitter… the fun and fantasy of the Casino and Gaming lifestyle is as close as your remote control!”(3) So, although much of the research done on the impacts of gambling focuses on individual pathology and the “problem gambler” rather than cultural analysis, there are obvious reasons why people in increasing numbers are throwing their lot in with chance. As sociologist Lorne Tepperman points out “In a consumer society like ours, people are looking for ways to reinvent themselves and to create lifestyle excitements and pleasures in a relatively stagnant economy. So gambling, along with sex and other consumer activities like shopping and fandom, [defined, for those of us not in the know, as “all the fans of a sport, activity or famous person”] become major cultural activities. People are responding in a legitimate way to the cultural cues which society is giving, namely that you’re a jerk if you’re not rich, so find a way to get rich.” These visions of the “good life” to be gained through getting lucky and raking in a big win are nurtured and sustained by a slew of commercial gambling advertisements in print, on radio, television, the Internet and billboards. As part of a research study on the possible impact of commercial gambling advertising on youth knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behavioural intentions, Professor David Korn of the University of Toronto carried out a content analysis of more than 450 commercial gambling advertisements. He found that the main messages such ads promote include:
As policy analyst Jason Azmier points out, for those concerned about the possible personal and social costs of gambling, “There’s a massive popular culture barrier because almost all the references to gambling are positive. It’s almost impossible to counteract this bombardment of messages.” Has constant exposure to such positive messaging created a “culture of acceptance” about gambling? For Dr. Rina Gupta of McGill University’s International Centre for Youth Gambling Problems and High Risk Behaviours who has been studying gambling since 1993, a shift in youth attitudes has been noticeable. “Kids are viewing gambling as being very socially acceptable, whereas when we first started doing our research, a certain proportion of kids were afraid of getting caught gambling. Now they don’t feel it’s a behaviour they have to hide.” It seems as though those kids have lots of company. What are the Current Demographics of Gambling and What Do They Mean?
Judged by the dollars spent, gambling is now more popular in America
than baseball, the movies, and Disneyland combined. What holds in the U.S. may increasingly be true of Canada as well. The Canada West Foundation undertook an extensive three-year study of gambling in Canada from 1998 to 2001 which eventually resulted in 16 different reports. In 2005, CWF released senior policy analyst Jason Azmier’s most recent study: Gambling in Canada 2005: Statistics and Context (5) from which the following facts are drawn:
There are a few other sobering statistics to consider:
The Impact of Gambling Problems and Gambling Culture on Canadian Families
No wife can endure a gambling husband,
One of my first memories of my grandmother is of her trying to teach me how
to play poker when I couldn't even see the table. I'd dress up and try to go
gambling with the old ladies, and for some reason they'd let me in. If, as the prevalence studies show, 2-4% of the adult Canadian population struggles with problem gambling, what are some likely consequences for the families of those gamblers? In their exploratory study At Home With Gambling, researchers David Korn and Lorne Tepperman summarize much of the literature available about the impact of pathological gambling on the quality of family life. Beset by financial worries and the compulsion of an addiction, few problem gamblers have the resources, either emotional or economic, to devote to their families. Indeed those families, according to many studies, live in “an atmosphere of chronic interpersonal conflict, poor parenting and domestic violence.” (6) Such an environment is highly detrimental to both children and spouses of the pathological gambler. Dealing with both the physical and emotional absence of their ‘untrustworthy’ parent, the children struggle with feelings of anger, hurt, guilt, rejection and abandonment. In many cases, the gambler’s behaviour has caused a rupture with other family members such as grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles whose love and care might have provided a respite from family tensions and an alternative and healthier model for behaviour. (7) Burdened with feelings of anxiety and depression, “children of problem gamblers not only indulge more frequently and more heavily in potentially addictive substances and activities, but also appear to be at greater risk for developing a permanent addictive pattern of behaviour.” (8) Spouses too try to develop coping mechanisms to deal with the ongoing instability in their domestic lives, and the strains on their marriages. Besides resorting to gambling themselves or using drugs, alcohol, tobacco, food and even shopping as self-medication, many borrow money from family or friends to meet their family’s basic needs. One study found that in a bid to shore up their families, approximately two-thirds of spouses gave up their personal savings and 46% gave up their personal earnings. (9)
In such circumstances, physical and emotional abuse escalates, mental and physical health is compromised and family breakups and even suicide become another casualty or “cost” of the gambling addiction. It’s worth noting that though most research in this area has traditionally focused on the male pathological gambler, the number of women dealing with a gambling problem is steadily rising. For sociologist Lorne Tepperman, the emphasis on gambling pathology is, at best, an incomplete approach and, at worst, an example of “the gambling industry playing footsie with the psychologists.” He adds, “The gambling industry and the government like to view gambling as an individualistic behaviour to be explained in terms of the psychology and pathology of individuals. And that’s very convenient because it allows them to blame the individual… as though this is an individual behaviour with individual causes and individual cures.” Instead, as a sociologist with a particular focus on the family and a secondary interest in deviance, Tepperman’s orientation when he sees a behaviour is to ask what factors in the person’s environment reward or punish or push or normalize the behaviour, so that if he were in that position he would probably do the same things. From that perspective, he and David Korn in the Department of Public Health Science at the University of Toronto have examined gambling as a family enterprise to be understood in terms of family traditions, family practices, rewards and motivations. Given the highly diverse makeup of Canadian society, their exploratory study At Home with Gambling focused not only on the role that gambling plays in families but also on the ways in which different ethno-cultural groups vary in terms of their values and traditions about gambling. The six groups surveyed were Chinese, Russian, Latin American, Caribbean, British and Aboriginal. Initial results confirmed what past studies had also suggested, namely that there exists a culture of gambling within certain families that transfer gambling lore, including attitudes, values and practices, from generation to generation. Not surprisingly, families that gamble and talk about gambling are more likely to produce gamblers with moderate to severe problems in the next generation. Korn and Tepperman also cite a 1989 study which found that the majority of children make their first bet with parents. Siblings and grandparents have a role to play too. Interestingly, their exploratory research showed that adolescent respondents who talked to a brother about gambling while growing up are more than four times as likely to have a gambling problem than adolescent respondents who did not. (10) In the ethno-cultural portion of the study, the highest rate of probable pathological gambling was reported by Aboriginals at 50%, followed by Russians at 33%. The lowest rates occurred among Latin Americans at 9%, with the remaining three groups in the middle ranges. For the Caribbean respondents in this study, gambling is not considered a family-oriented activity, whereas in the Chinese community, the traditional game of mahjong is usually played at home and among friends. Gambling has a long history in Chinese culture, and appears to have continued in the Canadian context. As with the Russian immigrants in this study, gambling is often done with members of the same ethno-cultural group. This may be partly due to the language barrier faced by relative newcomers which often limits opportunities for leisure and entertainment. For some, it is also an acceptable and even positive way to retain one’s cultural identity by socializing with friends and acquaintances from the same background. However, regardless of whether gambling has been part of a particular family or ethno-cultural group’s history, the fact remains that a generation is now growing up in Canada with gambling options not only widely available but eagerly and openly advertised and promoted. The long-range consequences of such a shift are still unknown but as researcher Jamie Wiebe of the Responsible Gambling Council points out, for many adolescents gambling is now seen as the new rite of passage into adulthood. The study of 9-16 year-olds she conducted with co-researcher Agata Falkowski-Ham found that as kids age, they are more likely to see gambling as “cool” and “fun”, even though their awareness that some people struggle with gambling problems also increases. Though gambling research is a relatively new area, particularly in Canada, enough studies have now been done, both nationally and internationally in the U.S., New Zealand, Australia and Europe, to conclude that prevalence rates for youth gambling are rising. There is considerable debate over the methods used to measure problem gambling rates among adolescents and a group of 15 Canadian researchers is currently working on developing a new measuring instrument which will, they hope, be more reliable in its conclusions. However, most research to date shows that teens are two to four times more likely than adults to develop a gambling problem. The current estimates are that between 4% and 8% of adolescents (particularly males) exhibit the traits of pathological gambling while another 10% to 14% are at risk for either developing a serious problem or returning to it. As Rina Gupta of McGill University’s International Centre for Youth Gambling Problems and High Risk Behaviours points out, adolescence is the peak time for high-risk behaviours, especially among young males. In fact, according to the Centre, research shows that gambling is the single most popular high-risk activity among teenagers, with 80% of teenagers participating. Though many parents will talk with their pre-teens and teens about drug, alcohol and tobacco use, they seem unaware of gambling’s possible negative consequences, even though research indicates that many young people start gambling before the age of 11. What forms does youth gambling take and what are its possible effects? Many youth are introduced to gambling when their parents or grandparents take them to play bingo or cards or buy them lottery tickets as gifts or “stocking stuffers” at Christmas. Teens often move on to video lottery terminals, sports betting, and frequently as a rite of passage on their 18th birthday, a visit to the casino. According to Rina Gupta, the last two gambling surveys carried out in Quebec showed that 10% of adolescents are playing VLTs in bars, a figure higher than that among the adult population. Sports wagering in the form of pools, lotteries and betting is especially popular among young men and there are tales of elementary and high school students using their allowances and lunch money to buy tickets, while some university students squander their tuition or scholarship money to feed their gambling addiction. A 2004 report, Parental Socialization of Youth Gambling, prepared by the Youth Gambling Research Group at Brock University, found that the top three preferred gambling activities for teens with two or more gambling problems were instant-win or scratch tickets (62.5%), raffles (52.1%) and cards (41.7%) (11) Sociologist Robert Wood from the University of Lethbridge emphasizes that adult society sanctions gambling or at the very least, remains unaware of its potential cost to youth, even though many pathological gamblers have reported starting serious gambling by about age 10. “Most people would think it laughable to say that high school kids are more likely to be problem gamblers than adults. I think a lot of parents would never see it as an issue. But as teenagers, behaviours are emerging that may lead to very serious problems as they get older.” In their 2003 paper Youth Gambling: A Clinical and Research Perspective, Drs. Derevensky and Gupta of McGill outline the possible consequences of that behaviour. “[Adolescent problem gamblers] repeatedly lie to family and friends, borrow and steal money to support their gambling behaviour, preoccupy themselves with gambling, sacrifice school, parents and friends in order to continue their gambling …” (12) For teens who become “hooked”, money is less the end goal than the vehicle that allows them to keep playing. For many, excitement, entertainment, escape from a world of problems into a fantasy of success, the wish to relieve boredom and feelings of depression appear to be driving factors. Such youth remain at increased risk of developing one or multiple addictions and are more prone to thoughts of suicide, as well as actual suicide attempts. (13) The International Centre for Youth Problem Gambling and High Risk Behaviours website offers the following checklist of behaviours for parents who worry that their children may be excessively involved in gambling:
It’s clear that such an extreme scenario would cause significant strain in most families. As attention is increasingly being paid to the issue of youth problem gambling, more studies have been funded to discover the factors which might prevent or exacerbate such problems.
Research about youth and gambling is consistent: parents play a critical role in influencing their children’s gambling behaviours and preoccupations. Many youth learn about gambling from their parents, gamble with parents and at home with friends, receive scratch and lottery tickets as gifts from family members and are aware of their parents’ gambling activities. As researchers Jamie Wiebe and Agata Falkowski-Ham caution in their study of gambling attitudes and behaviours among 9-16 year-olds, “it’s important that parents realize the impact their own gambling behaviour and attitudes have on their children and the importance of transferring healthy and balanced attitudes about gambling.” (14) Parenting styles also have an impact here. Several studies have shown that authoritative parenting has the best results when it comes to reducing the high risk behaviours favoured by some adolescents, including problem gambling. In a 2002 report, Identity Formation of University Students and Gambling Behaviour, researchers at four Ontario universities define the authoritative family as warm, and engaging in open communication and reciprocal decision-making. In contrast, the authoritarian family is described as controlling and over-demanding of the child’s behaviour, while the permissive family is characterized by weak boundaries and poor parental monitoring of children’s behaviour. (15) The researchers’ “most confident conclusion" was that pathological gamblers are more likely to come from homes where parents favour an authoritarian style in their child rearing. There are a few caveats which should be considered. First, as Rina Gupta points out, “We don’t know if these higher rates of problem gambling among youth mean that down the line there’s going to be a higher rate of adults with gambling problems . A lot of kids may experience some degree of problem but they will mature out of it. So this brings up the possibility of spontaneous recovery without treatment.” To come up with more definitive answers to these questions, there is a pressing need for longitudinal studies on youth gambling Second, parents may have a critical role to play but there are also many other factors involved, including a young person’s temperament and predilection for risk, as well as the influence of peers, school, community and the larger society. Rather than concentrating on individual pathology, Lorne Tepperman insists that it’s worth recognizing that “this is normal behaviour within the context of a consumer society where young people are largely unregulated, where they are being urged and encouraged to show off, to be glamorous and exciting and crazy, but there’s nothing new. There’s just new opportunities for danger.” Nonetheless, it’s clear that by legitimizing and promoting another potentially “dangerous activity”, governments have, at the very least, created difficult issues for families to deal with. Oh, Brave New World: Technology-assisted Gambling Gambling is the future on the Internet. Technology-assisted gambling is, apparently, an idea whose time has come. The colours, lights and sounds of video lottery terminals (VLTs) are such an addictive combination that the format has become known as the crack-cocaine of gambling. Part of its addictive potential has to do with the speed with which a gambling transaction can be repeated, a feature which also characterizes Internet-based gambling. Entrepreneurs with an eye for revenue-generating opportunities have been quick to seize upon the gambling potential of the Internet. It has been estimated that as of December 2003, revenues from online poker alone amounted to approximately $34 million U.S. dollars a month. And there’s more to come with cellphone, interactive TV and videogame gambling all in the works. At the moment, online gambling is strictly speaking illegal in Canada but many gambling researchers believe that change is inevitable as governments continue to lose revenues to offshore gambling sites while the social problems generated by gambling remain strictly localized. There is still much that is unknown about the effects and implications of this new vehicle for separating gamblers from their funds (or, far less likely, augmenting them.) In 2001, the Canada West Foundation, as part of its three-year study of gambling, produced Gambling @ Home: Internet Gambling in Canada. One of its key findings was that “online gambling has the unique potential to increase the social cost of gambling and problem gambling because it combines the acknowledged double threat of high speed and convenient access with a technology that appeals to youth.” (16) This finding seems to be corroborated by recent research undertaken by Robert Williams and Robert Wood of the University of Lethbridge. According to sociologist Rob Wood, “We found that close to 40% among the Internet sample were problem gamblers as opposed to 4% in the general population. So Internet gamblers are ten times more likely to have problems than land-based gamblers, which is pretty significant.” The immersive nature of the online gambling experience may be part of the reason for the higher rates but as Wood points out, “Some people [that we surveyed] gambled 8, 10, 12 hours a day. When we asked them why they didn’t just go to the casino, comfort, convenience and sometimes the higher betting limits were factors people mentioned.” For some, gambling at home meant that they could avoid the smoky atmosphere of the casinos and gamble longer. The study found that Internet problem gamblers tend to have higher levels of education, that the rates of problem gambling are higher among those under 30 years old and that the vast majority were recently unemployed. (17) Class and economic factors may be at play here. At the very least, people involved in Internet gambling have to have access (preferably high speed) to a computer, some familiarity and comfort with the technology and a credit card (or else know someone who does). As with issues regarding media violence in television programming, DVDs, videotapes and videogames, the potential to gamble is now ensconced within the domain of the home. Available 24 hours a day every day, and facilitated by the electronic transfer of funds via credit cards, which can seem like virtual rather than “real” money — until the credit card statement arrives. Moreover, unlike the more companionable forms of gambling like bingo, cards and mahjong often played at home, Internet gambling tends to be a solitary pursuit. For youth hooked into computer technology, it’s not difficult to find those Internet sites which offer “visitors” the chance to try their hand at such casino-type games as slot machines and blackjack. In their 2003 report Understanding the Audience: The Key to Preventing Youth Gambling Problems, Wiebe and Falkowski-Ham found that while 10% of 11-16 year olds reported betting on the Internet, 95% said the site didn’t require a credit card. As the researchers point out, although players do not actually have to risk their own money, their wins and losses are displayed in terms of dollars. Essentially, they state, youth are learning to gamble on “adult” games and the long-term impact of such sites on later gambling practices remains unknown. Given that kids are usually far more technologically savvy than their parents, this becomes another compelling reason for putting gambling on the “to-talk-about-and-model” agenda within the family. It might be advisable to do that sooner rather than later. Rob Wood predicts that “Within five years we’ll see wholehearted government endorsement of online gambling. And once it’s legitimate and regulated and perceived as more safe by the population, I think you’re going to see huge increases in the numbers of people who take advantage of it. Given what we’ve seen in our study with the rates of problem gambling, if the government ever does expand — and given their very poor track record in the past in dealing with gambling problems — I think we’re going to see a literal disaster in terms of problem gambling if Internet gambling is implemented.” No Family is an Island: the Larger Picture The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice is so pleasurable, that I assume
it must be evil.
Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich — something
for nothing. Journalist Heywood Broun might have had his tongue placed firmly in his cheek when he penned his gambling quip decades ago; today, he’d probably be surprised to find that the very forces which previously might have condemned the practice are only too eager to tout its harmlessness as a “lifestyle activity”. It’s no wonder, then, that for many families, gambling hasn’t quite registered on their parental radar screen. Even if it has and they have tried to make family members “gambling literate” in the same way that many parents now realize children must become “media literate” in order to navigate through the media surround, they’re bucking some pretty powerful forces. Rina Gupta and her colleagues at the International Centre for Youth Gambling are familiar with these issues. “Sometimes we get calls from parents who say ‘My kid’s playing poker at his friend’s house and they’re wagering huge amounts of money and objects and the kids are coming to collect at my house. I can’t believe that parents let this go on and when I speak to the mother of the boy who lets this happen in her basement every week, she says ‘I’d rather he be doing this than out doing drugs.’ So there are some parents who are enabling this and others who are up in arms. The bottom line is that there just isn’t enough prevention out there for parents to understand that this is an activity that’s meant for entertainment and fun and once people gamble beyond their limits, it can become dangerous.” This theme of potential danger is borne out by others who have either been studying the effects of gambling addiction or have had personal experience with its sometimes devastating consequences, which can include bankruptcy, family breakup, domestic abuse, assault, fraud, theft, homelessness and even suicide. Some researchers have found that up to 90% of pathological gamblers have considered suicide and that about 20% of those in treatment actually attempted it. (18) Morally, the government, as both the regulator and provider/beneficiary of state-sponsored gambling, is on pretty shaky ground. It’s true that governments also derive revenue from tobacco and alcohol consumption but they are not in the business of actively promoting the sale of those products. This is particularly problematic since gambling promotions are often targeted to the most vulnerable segments of the “potential market”: the addicted, the poor, the young and the elderly. After 25 years of gambling research, Professor Garry Smith states, “Governments operate gambling as if they were a corporation, working to maximize profits. We don’t elect them to make money through gambling, we elect them to look after people. Some of the money is used for good things but I don’t think it’s worth it if you’re putting out a product that causes some people to commit suicide. How do you reconcile that if you’re the government. Do you say 22 suicides a year are okay with us? That’s unconscionable.” Though some of the funds collected do go into worthwhile social programs and charitable endeavours, the problem is that a substantial proportion of the revenues is actually collected from those with a gambling addiction. In a 2004 study, researchers Robert Williams and Robert Wood investigated the proportion of gaming revenue derived from problem gamblers. For them, “The very legitimacy of government-sponsored gambling hinges on the assumption that a large portion of the revenue does not come from an addicted and vulnerable segment of the population.” (19) In fact, they found otherwise. Their results suggested that the approximately 4% of the population with a serious gambling problem contributed 23% of the revenues; other prevalence studies have pegged the figure as high as 40%. As the United Church emphasized in a 1998 policy paper on the Gambling Economy, this fact means that “financial responsibility for public services has effectively been transferred from the tax base to the losses of gamblers.” (20) This leaves the government in an obvious conflict of interest position. According to several gambling researchers, the provinces do not balk at setting aside funds for treatment programs but their advertising budget for prevention of gambling problems does not come close to equaling the money devoted to gambling promotion. (As it now stands, the percentage of gross gambling revenue devoted to prevention and treatment averages between .3 and 1.2%. which is, as Williams and Wood point out, “a very small fraction of the gaming revenues generated by problem gamblers.”) Given governments’ increasing dependence on the revenue generated by state-run gambling, it’s possible to argue that they are the most addicted “players” of all. In discussing the social safety net, the United Church policy paper affirmed that protecting the social safety net “is a duty of citizenship and therefore one that should be shared by all taxpayers, not just gamblers. It is therefore not a charity but a duty of the government on behalf of all its citizens.” The Canada West Foundation study Canadian Gambling Behaviour and Attitudes concludes that such views are shared by about 20% of the population, a proportion which researcher Jason Azmier describes as an angry and articulate minority versus a happy majority. Since 80-90% of Canadians gamble and 95% do so without disordered behaviour, most people do not have to deal personally with its possible consequence as a personal problem. According to the survey, Canadians want gambling activity, low taxes and high services. They see gambling as a right and an acceptable activity and believe it’s going to happen anyway. For them, it remains a silent issue. At the same time, as both Azmier and Smith point out, there’s never a groundswell from the public calling for expanded gambling. In fact, it appears that the public appetite for new gambling activity is low. The study results indicate that the strong public desire for increased public consultation on such matters is underscored by the finding that “in every region Canadians want the opportunity to decide the level of gambling in their region through public consultation PRIOR to the introduction of new gambling forms”. As part of its summation, the Canadian Gambling Behaviour and Attitudes study concludes “Canadians recognize, on balance, [that] gambling generates more harm than benefit” but nonetheless see it as an acceptable, inevitable and entrenched part of their culture. “In exchange for the opportunity to maximize gambling revenues, provincial governments accept the responsibility to determine levels of gambling that are both publicly acceptable and that limit harm.” (21) The question then becomes ‘Is this being done?’ And if so, how? The Search for Winning Strategies
Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will,
If you must play, decide upon three things at the start: Recent research has emphasized the need to move from a disease model that mainly focuses on gambling as an individual pathology requiring treatment to a public health model that first considers the impact of gambling on community public health and then searches for strategies to minimize its impact. Besides detailing the economic costs and benefits associated with gambling, such an approach, suggested by researchers David Korn and Howard Shaffer, also bears in mind the way in which gambling affects quality of life at the personal, familial and community levels, as well as the impact of gambling expansion on vulnerable, at risk and marginalized populations. According to Korn, health initiatives based on a public health model are pro-active, with health promotion and prevention as the primary focus, while treatment is a secondary concern. There are certainly other precedents for such an approach, including public health campaigns around alcohol, tobacco and media violence, as well as violence in society and gun control. Some steps have already been taken and need to be implemented even more strongly in the future. Areas for action include the following:
Public awareness and public education campaigns Parents, educators, the general public all need to be better informed about gambling in general. Researcher Garry Smith’s viewpoint is measured but unequivocal. “I’m not anti-gambling myself. It can be a form of entertainment, it can be a worthwhile leisure pursuit when done in moderation. But I don’t think most people are aware of how pervasive gambling is, they don’t differentiate between different formats that much, they don’t know the odds. There’s a vacuum of knowledge out there. Some forms are relatively benign, some are hazardous.” The dangers of exploitation loom particularly large with machine gambling, especially since the gambling providers do not supply the odds nor tell people how the machines work. The end result is that many people have serious misconceptions about their chances of winning. Parents, educators and the general public also need to be better informed about the potential for problem gambling and about its rising prevalence among young people, with its attendant negative consequences. It’s important that parents talk to their children about gambling activity the way they would about drugs or alcohol or some of the more extreme media images they might encounter. Given the research evidence which stresses the impact of parental modeling on young people’s gambling behaviour, setting an example of how to gamble responsibly would also appear to be, increasingly, part of good parenting. For Rina Gupta of the International Centre for Youth Gambling Problems and High Risk Behaviours, the issues are clear and extend beyond the home. “Parents need to be educated and they need to speak to their kids, just like alcohol prevention. But they do not hold the majority of the responsibility. Because the kids are being bombarded by these messages in society, either in advertising or the media…. these are more powerful than any message that parents are going to give a kid.” As was the case with the marketing of alcohol and tobacco, there is a need to develop responsible advertising guidelines, especially for messages targeted to vulnerable groups. The Nova Scotia-based citizen action group Game Over VLTs insists that government-sponsored commercials should not glamorize gambling, and should be aired only during adult programming. Health promotion campaigns about problem gambling and where to go for help, especially for youth, need to be expanded across the country. The new website aimed at young people, friends4friends (http://www.friends4friends.ca) is a striking example of an initiative designed to appeal to this particular audience. Develop gambling-related curricula for schools As part of a prevention strategy, many provincial government agencies that deal with substance abuse issues and problem gambling have put together one-shot presentations, usually 1-2 hours in duration, for high school and university students. Their brevity has worked against their having any long-term impact. Consequently, attempts have been made in various jurisdictions to develop more in-depth curricula with a gambling prevention focus. These include “Don’t Bet on It” in South Australia for ages 6-9; “Gambling: Minimizing Health Risks” in Queensland for levels 5-6; “Wanna Bet” in Minnesota for grades 3-8; “Count Me Out” in Quebec for ages 8-17; and “Gambling: A Stacked Deck” in Alberta for ages 13-18. (22) Evaluation of several of these programs indicates that simply knowing about gambling odds does not in itself alter gambling behaviour. Instead, people — and especially youth — need opportunities to practice skills specifically related to the problem (e.g., how to deal with peer pressure). (23)Changing attitudes, rather than simply dispensing information, seems to be the critical factor in reducing gambling activity. As with parental modeling, schools and school boards too, must consider the effects of their fundraising practices, which may include bingos, raffles, lotteries and even casino nights, on their students. More research must be done to inform public policy around gambling, particularly as it relates to the effect on the family. “What’s needed”, says Garry Smith, “is to get a relatively precise estimate of the economic and social costs of gambling. Benefits are easy to measure because they’re mainly dollars. The costs are much harder to measure. Sometimes they don’t surface till a few years later and they’re often hidden. Say a cost is family breakdown, loss of trust of your kids, your kids need counseling. Those are all costs but how do you measure that?“ In the meantime, there is little doubt that, as gambling becomes more entrenched, available and acceptable in the culture, the fallout for the family will continue to increase. And because of the regressive nature of this form of hidden (albeit willing) taxation, the money lost to gambling by low income earners has a greater impact on their ability to meet their basic needs — and those of their family members — than is the case with high-income earners. In other words, those individuals and families that can least afford to lose, proportionally lose the most. As the possible consequences mount, so will the need for support.
The evidence is still clear that families do have and can have an influence on children, that schools can have that too. We cannot leave it to industry and we cannot leave it to government so we are talking about civil society which often doesn’t get very well defined or very well resourced because it’s not the economy and it’s not the state. If the government is not inclined to tamper drastically with the gambling status quo, what will drive the impetus for change? Jason Azmier believes that it takes community interest to bring the issue to the forefront. The government, he says, does not want to have to face an angry public on these matters which generate a flurry of attention mainly when the media concentrate on high-profile cases, usually involving some tragic consequences. Thus far, the most sustained action has focussed on attempts by citizens to get rid of video lottery terminals (VLTs) in their communities. Nowhere in Canada has the struggle to make these machines less accessible been more heated than in Nova Scotia. On October 4, 2005, a citizens’ coalition Game Over VLTs. (www.GameOverVLTs.com) issued a press release stating that by a ratio of 2:1, Nova Scotians want VLTs banned To date, the government has remained unmoved by this strong expression of public opinion. What will it take to compel the government to offer gambling activities that reflect the public’s desires rather than its own? How do we create enough of a groundswell to force the government to be accountable to its citizenry for actions that do not contribute to the common good? If Jason Azmier is right and only 20% of the population is currently actively concerned about the social costs associated with accessible and heavily promoted gambling, then we must look to an earlier example — the struggle to change attitudes and health policy around tobacco promotion and consumption. In Azmier’s opinion, that paradigm shift will happen, as with tobacco, only when the wealth of data all points in the same direction. Certainly, current research (which also should include the heartfelt personal stories of gambling’s impact on individuals and their families available at www.GameOverVLTs.com) and policy must evolve with that goal in mind. In the interim, as we work towards more enlightened regulatory, preventive and supportive policies, we might be well advised to heed humorist Kin Hubbard’s sage advice: “The safest way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket.”
There are several internet sites which contain substantial collections of research material on gambling-related issues, as well as links to other digital collections. Some of the most useful are: Alberta Gaming Research Institute
Canada West Foundation
International Centre for Youth Gambling Problems and High Risk Behaviour
National Association of State and Provincial Lotteries
Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre
Responsible Gambling Council
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