Gambling Addiction Growing Among College Students

Michael Hudspeth started gambling when he was in junior high, shooting craps for lunch money on the cafeteria floor. When he went off to college, he played dice aboard Missouri’s riverboat casinos.

His losses grew from the $2 a day his mother gave him for lunch to $2,000 he once borrowed as a student loan--and he lost that in one night.

“I would go to the boat every day,” said Hudspeth, 24, who often skipped his classes at Missouri Western College in St. Joseph to gamble five minutes away at the St. Jo Frontier Casino. “I don’t know, it’s just something about all the people and excitement that keeps me going back.”

The spread of casinos across the country may be contributing to problem gambling among students.

Those who live close to casinos are more prone to gambling addiction, said Michael Frank, a professor of psychology at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey, which has a dozen casinos in Atlantic City. “It seems to be increasing in recent years.”

According to a 1997 study by Harvard Medical School’s Division on Addictions, about half of the college students surveyed in the United States and Canada said they had gambled at a casino during the previous year.

At Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, with two riverboats less than two miles from campus, a student was accused recently of bilking the school out of about $3,000 in a payroll scheme to support his gambling.

In New Jersey, “gambling is festering in every high school and college in New Jersey,” said Edward Looney, director of the New Jersey Council on Compulsive Gambling. “It’s absolutely epidemic. Just about any college in the country has students who gamble at racetracks and casinos.”

At the University of Kansas in Lawrence, which is within an hour’s drive of six casinos, students formed a Gamblers Anonymous chapter last year.

“Given that statistics show there’s a tendency for younger people to develop gambling problems, it is of particular concern having casinos so close to college campuses,” said Steve Taylor, a spokesman for the Missouri-based Casino Watch, an anti-gambling organization.

The legal age to gamble is 21 in most states, and casino operators can face big fines if a minor is caught gambling. But underage students have found ways to get in, just as they’ve managed to buy alcohol or get into bars. Many use fake or borrowed IDs or get through the door without being asked for proof of age.

Many college students have easy access to cash, either from a parent or from a student loan. Students are also flooded with credit card offers, and a parent usually is not required to co-sign.

All 11 of Missouri’s riverboat casinos have adopted a program called Project 21 to remind minors that it is illegal for them to gamble and to teach staff members how to spot underage gamblers.

Jeff Hook, the director of marketing at Harrah’s North Kansas City Casino & Hotel, said Harrah’s staff checks identification before a patron gets on the boat and again afterward if there are questions about the person’s age.

The operators of the Victorian Star, a riverboat casino that is planned near the University of Missouri at Columbia, “looked at this issue because we will be so close to the university,” said Michael Dickson, the general manager. “We plan to use programs designed to prevent underage gambling and hire a lot of local people who will know who’s 21 and who is not.”