Addicts Are Overlooked in Gambling Boom

A major expansion of casinos, the lottery, racetracks and card rooms is making California one of the nation’s gambling giants. Yet one result of this betting binge has received scant attention from public officials: pathological addiction.

Six years ago, the state created an Office of Problem Gambling but only last year gave it money to operate -- $3 million a year donated by Indian tribes. Despite the windfall, it still has no full-time staff and no plan of action, and has spent only $95,000 on a study.

Gambling addiction afflicts as many as 1 million Californians and often leads to bankruptcy, broken homes, increased crime and occasionally suicide, national studies have shown. Although addiction experts see hope in the newly funded state office, they remain skeptical.

“They don’t care. Pretty basic,” said former Democratic Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy, a national expert on gambling. “The people at the top are ignoring a very significant problem. You have a politically powerful industry and you have a lot of ignorance from elected officials.”

California spends far more money and attention on promoting gambling than it does on its effects. Today, a panel set up by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will recommend that California join a multi-state lottery to boost ticket sales with record-breaking jackpots. New legal agreements allow some Indian tribes unlimited expansion of slot machines on their land. And two initiatives on the November ballot could expand casino, card room and racetrack gambling.

Although the state spends $110 million a year on Medi-Cal drug and alcohol treatment programs, it has not, amid its casino expansion, spent any taxpayer money on gambling addiction. There are Gamblers Anonymous meetings -- 12-step programs modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous -- throughout the state, but little that costs the addict nothing for treatment.

Pathological addicts talk about being trapped in a constricting life in which nothing but the next pull of the slot machine is important, not even family. A South Carolina woman blamed gambling addiction for her decision to leave her 10-day-old baby in a sweltering car while she played video poker. The infant died. The mother was put on probation, but sent to jail four months ago after being convicted of theft.

“The wreckage from gambling is unbelievable, and there has to be some resources out there for treatment,” said Eric Geffner, a gambling addiction counselor in Los Angeles. “That needs to be a priority, but right now the priorities are different.”

The newly created Office of Problem Gambling has $2.9 million in the bank and an additional $3 million on the way this year, all donated from Indian tribes. Officials expect the office eventually will employ three or four people.

Other states spend far more than California on addiction programs per capita. Oregon’s program -- considered the best in the country, with a large media campaign, research programs and training for lottery workers -- has been allocated $6 million. Minnesota spends $2.4 million a year. Both states have far smaller gambling operations and far smaller populations than California.

There is debate now over what the state should do with the new money to tackle problem gambling. Pathological gambling addiction is considered a lifelong affliction that in some cases should be treated with extensive therapy. Clinical specialists believe compulsive gamblers are trying to reach a sort of psychoactive high akin to taking drugs.

Enticed by Television

A growing number of teenage gamblers, addiction experts say, have been enticed by TV shows such as “Vegas” and by the California State Poker Championship, which featured actor Ben Affleck. Should they be targeted? Should there be concentrated efforts near casinos or a statewide media campaign? Should schools participate?

State officials acknowledge that they are just now focusing on the Office of Problem Gambling. Its budget is not enough to pay for on-demand treatment programs for low-income residents, but is perhaps enough for an effective media campaign.

Schwarzenegger has proposed creating gambling addiction programs under the recent legal agreements with Indian tribes, but those would be negotiated between counties and tribal governments. The new state office would coordinate state and county programs, the governor’s office said.

The officials said they would develop a statewide plan after the nonprofit California Council on Problem Gambling provides the results of its $95,000 study.

“There are no guarantees,” said Michael Cunningham, deputy director of the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, which is administering the new office. “We’re looking at it as the state is making an investment in this issue, and it’s our responsibility to really do the best we can.”

Until now, the state’s most reliable commitment to gambling addiction has come not from taxpayers but from the California Lottery. The lottery has granted $65,000 annually (increased to $85,000 this year) to the California Council on Problem Gambling. It’s a small amount compared with the more than $40 billion in tickets the lottery has sold over its 18-year history.

The council uses most of the lottery money for a Chicago-based telephone hotline that refers people to addiction counselors and collects addresses so the council can mail brochures to potential addicts. The hotline number is in tiny type on the back of lottery tickets.

But the lottery and the council pay a high price for this service, a breakdown of its costs reveals. The lottery has spent $195,000 on the hotline over three years. During that time, operators assisted 939 lottery addicts and mailed 237 information packets. That amounts to roughly $207 per phone call or $822 per packet during the three years, the breakdown shows.

Rosa Escutia, a spokeswoman for the California Lottery, said the agency would review its gambling addiction programs and the money it spends on the hotline after the council completed its study and reported back to state officials. But she said the lottery did not consider itself the same as other gambling enterprises; studies show that about 4% of problem gamblers are addicted to the lottery as compared to other games, she said.

“The individuals who play the lottery have an extra dollar in their pocket,” Escutia said. “They do not go out and spend the family’s mortgage money to play our products. It’s a different type of person.”

Although the state has lagged in its efforts to create an office to deal with gambling addiction, the council has struggled for attention and faced its own internal controversy.

The council has several executives from the gambling industry on its unpaid board of directors and receives its money almost exclusively from card rooms, Indian casinos and the lottery.

Its most recent board meeting was at the Hollywood Park Casino, owned by one of its directors. The board also includes several gambling therapists and former addicts.

The council is embroiled in a legal fight with its former executive director, Thomas Tucker, and has struggled for years to run its own programs, which train new counselors in gambling-specific therapies and casino workers on how to spot addicts. It operates on less than $300,000 a year in donations and has no choice but to accept money from the industry, said the council’s unpaid interim executive director, Bruce Roberts.

“From our point of view,” said Roberts, an insurance broker, “we can have people on the board who can take back what we are trying to do to their industry.... The council takes no stand on gaming. Our mission is to help the problem gambler.”

Tucker, in his wrongful-termination lawsuit against the council, says it needs reform because gambling executives on its board “failed to raise a single dollar of donations for a three-year period,” even though they were appointed to raise money. “This would have the effect of keeping the organization from growing and carrying out its mission,” he alleged.

In the complaint, filed last year and pending in Riverside County, Tucker also said that the council could be violating U.S. tax law by paying for a nonprofit hotline that refers addicts to its own board members who are making money as counselors. “The not-for-profit board of directors [is] receiving pay for referrals from the help line,” Tucker alleged.

Tucker, who has started his own nonprofit gambling addiction group, declined to comment on the lawsuit. So did Roberts, except to say that Tucker’s allegations should not be given credence and that gambling interests on the board have raised money for the council.

Even with its problems and lack of money, the California Council on Problem Gambling has been the state’s most significant player when it comes to confronting the gambling industry.

In 1997, the state began to play a direct -- but minimal -- role in treating gambling addiction when it created an office to deal with the problem. But the state did not give the office any money, and it subsequently did nothing. Lawmakers closed the office last year and opened a new one, the Office of Problem Gambling, under another department.

The office received $3 million in Indian tribe money out of $100 million contributed by gambling tribes to a special state account. Although addiction programs are listed as the account’s first priority, it was the first time the state had agreed to devote a significant amount of money to the problem. An additional $3 million is included in this year’s state budget.

“It’s a start,” said Richard J. Rosenthal, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist who has been treating compulsive gamblers for 25 years. “Do you know how many years we have been trying to get the state to recognize the problem and contribute anything?”

A Need to Contribute

Gambling interests have come to realize over the last decade that they need to contribute to addiction programs. Executives with casinos and gambling lobbyists have said that if they ignore the problem, as the tobacco industry once did, they may pay a price in lawsuits filed by addicts.

Card rooms and racetracks point toward Proposition 68, the November ballot initiative that would allow slot machines at their businesses and earmark $3 million annually toward addiction programs. That would essentially match the commitment from 28 Indian tribes that pay into a special fund set up four years ago.

The tribes say they are willing to donate, but even with Proposition 68 on the horizon, other California gambling interests need to pay up.

“Tribal governments should not be the only source of funds for that program,” said Jacob Coin, executive director of the California Nations Indian Gaming Assn.

“You have got card rooms and racetracks who are as much a part of that industry as anyone else.”

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Hooked

A 1999 report by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission estimated that 1.5% of the U.S. adult population, or about 3 million people, have been ‘pathological gamblers’ at some time in their lives.

Lifetime percent of adults addicted to:

Gambling: 1.5%

Drugs: 6.2%

Alcohol: 13.8%

Some symptoms of pathological gambling: +

* Preoccupation with past, present and future gambling experiences and with ways to obtain money for gambling

* Need to increase the amount of wagers

* Repeated unsuccessful efforts to cut back or stop

* Becoming restless or irritable when trying to cut back or stop

* Gambling to escape from everyday problems or to relieve feelings of helplessness, anxiety, or depression

* Trying to recoup immediately after losing money (chasing losses)

* Lying about gambling

* Committing illegal acts to finance gambling

* Losing or jeopardizing a personal relationship, job, or career opportunity because of gambling

* Requesting gifts or loans to pay gambling debts

+ Individuals who meet at least five of the criteria are diagnosed as having pathological gambling disorder.

Sources: U.S. General Accounting Office report, ‘Impact of Gambling’; National Gambling Impact Study Commission; American Psychiatric Assn.