Gambling Problems Begin at an Early Age

Nineteen-year-old Moe Pergament buys a toy gun, drives wildly so that he can be stopped by police so he can flash the gun so he will be shot by police so he can be free of his gambling debt.

God, what desperation! He left a note that he owed $6,000 from gambling on the World Series. What tragedy.

The details of Moe Pergament’s problems have yet to emerge. But people in the Long Island problems gambling network say he never asked them for help. Everything they’ve dealt with in the past screams to them that this wasn’t a one-time gambling incident. It doesn’t work that way. They think they could have helped him.

It probably began before he was 13 years old.

“And you know what,” said David S. of Long Island Gamblers Anonymous, “this kid will be forgotten in a week.”

“Probably will,” said Heiko Ganzer, program director for treating adolescents with gambling problems at the Pedersen Crag division of the state-supported GamPro.

That’s the larger tragedy. A life is snuffed out over a gambling debt and who will acknowledge the problem? The governor who wouldn’t say drink alcohol because it provides the state with tax revenue, will endorse the lottery that says: “You can’t win it if you’re not in it.”

Kids love sports. And a group of high school kids will egg each other on: “If you know so much about football, why not take them and give three points against the Vikings.” Or bet that Bengals and Jaguars score at least 41 points.

David S. said it’s normal for a gambler to begin at age 13, maybe at a casino with his parents, maybe a football card in school or poker in the cafeteria. Maybe he won a little at the beginning. “A dollar or two may not be enough, so maybe an older kid finds someone who can take the action.

“When he first gets in over his head, he borrows from his parents without asking. When he gets caught, he apologizes. Are they going to beat him? They say, ‘Swear you’ll never do it again,’ and he’s forgiven.

“The next time he goes to them and says, ‘You got to get me out because the bad people are going to kill me,’ even if he’s never been threatened. No parent wants to see his child hurt. They say, ‘Better staighten out your life.’

“By the third time, it’s too difficult to go to parents and maybe too big for a group of friends. You start thinking about breaking into a house. Maybe suicide seems the easiest way out.”

College is the transition point: Now I am a man. “But, emotionally you were so wrapped up in gambling, you’re 19 but you’re still 13,” David S. said. You think you know more about picking a winner. You’re chasing a winner to get even.

The line is there every day in this and almost all the other newspapers. It’s illegal, but it’s victimless, isn’t it? What about poor Moe’s family and friends, and the poor policeman, who’ll suffer all his life?

What about all the other kids with problems who are college freshmen, or younger. David S. said he wrote to 350 schools on Long Island and followed up with phone calls offering to speak at school groups. He got four responses. School people tell him, “We’d love to have you, but we have no problem in this school.”

You can’t smell it or see it happening, and the problem gamblers are often the smartest kids. “I was valedictorian of my class and dean’s list in college,” David S. said. He’s a recovering problem gambler.

And Reginald Tuggle, director of community relations at Nassau Community College, where Moe Pergament was enrolled, insists that there is no problem on his campus. There are preventive drug and alcohol sessions on campus but none on gambling. Texas Tech is the only known campus that has one.

Of course, the colleges don’t franchise a campus bookmaker, any more than a high school does. But it’s an issue being ignored and they’re not part of the solution. “It’s a mammoth problem in New York--worse only in Mississippi,” Ganzer said, and surveys suggest that Nassau and Suffolk probably are worst of all. Adolescent problem gambling is growing at three times the rate of adult problems.

“Society is having a love affair with gambling and doesn’t see the dark side,” Sheila Blum, director of the South Oaks treatment center, said. “We used to say to parents, ‘Don’t feel relieved if your kid is only drinking, not doing drugs.’ Now we say, ‘Don’t feel relieved if your kid is only gambling.’ ”

Maybe it begins with the innocence of grandma putting a lottery ticket in a birthday card. Most kids who gamble don’t become psychotic gamblers. Not all people who take a drink become alcoholics and not everybody who tokes grass from time to time becomes a coke fiend. But we recognize the danger. “There’s a tremendous amount of gambling going on in high schools and colleges and our society has blinders on,” Blum said.

It was only two seasons ago that the Boston College gambling story broke, but David S. will bet he can find a football betting card on the Nassau or Hofstra or Post campus in 10 minutes--and in high schools. In short order, he said, he could find a contact with a bookmaker.