Residents Will Bet $10 Billion This Year : California Becomes a High-Stakes State

Californians will bet more than $10 billion this year, about $5 billion of it in illegal wagers on sports events, as interest in gambling soars, experts say.

“The public acceptance of charitable bingo, high-stakes bingo on Indian reservations, lottery, horse racing, card rooms and casino gambling aboard a cruise ship is creating an atmosphere conducive to the proliferation of gambling in California,” a state Department of Justice report says.

California was ranked second in 1981 as far as state tax revenue from legal gambling is concerned, according to a study done by the Nevada State Gambling Control Board. Stu Curtis of the board said that “it wouldn’t surprise me” if today the Golden State is No. 1 due to the new California Lottery.

‘High-Stakes State’

“We used to be known as the high-tech state,” said Thomas Martinez, author of a book about gambling. “Maybe now we’ll become known as the high-stakes state.”

The state lottery, which began Oct. 3, greatly expanded the public’s access to gambling. More than 500 million lottery tickets have been sold so far through 21,000 retail outlets. That is 10 million a day.

But there are also several other targets for gambling dollars:

- Sports betting, which is “up drastically” according to a Los Angeles detective interviewed by the Sacramento Bee newspaper. Top bookmakers handle as much as $1 million a week in bets, the Bee said. An estimated $5 billion in illegal bets will be made this year by Californians on athletic events.

- Legal card clubs. They are expected to make $110 million this year. Betting in the clubs is expected to top $1 billion.

- Horse racing at 14 tracks, which will attract about $2.2 billion in wagers this year.

- Bingo games run by charities and churches and on Indian reservations. Seventeen Indian reservations are either running or planning to run the games. Revenue from bingo games has soared to more than $30 million a year in Los Angeles alone, according to the Bee.

- Nevada casinos. Californians lost an estimated $1.5 billion at the casinos last year, several times the amounts of five or 10 years ago, according to the Bee.

Lynn Simons, a gambling executive in Atlantic City, said that “gambling has grown up and matured. It’s no longer a mystique, an intimidating thing--it’s a recreation.”

Critics See Down Side

But critics see the rise in gambling leading to higher crime, more cases of compulsive gambling and the wasting of money by the poor on the lottery and other games.

One compulsive gambler, a former Oakland pharmacist who was given a false name in the Bee article, said he blew a $3-million fortune on wagering. The betting broke up his marriage, ruined his career and caused him to think about suicide.

“I wanted to put a gun to my head,” he said. “And I did a couple of times, too. But I was too chicken to pull the trigger.”

One lottery fan, Bill Woehl of Fresno, has papered a wall of his apartment with more than 2,100 losing lottery tickets. He has sold a TV set, microwave oven, video recorder and furniture to finance his habit.

“We (still) have a chance to recoup,” he said.