Report Urges Gambling Restrictions

In a report that provides the broadest look yet at compulsive gambling in America, a special federal commission is urging a moratorium on the growth of legalized wagering and sweeping policy reforms to try to stop reckless losses, especially among teenagers and the poor.

It places the number of compulsive gamblers at 5.4 million, substantially more than previously thought and more than the nation’s rolls of hard-core drug users.

The $5-million report, to be released today, culminates two years of intensive study and political debate over the explosive proliferation of gambling nationwide.

It proposes a ban on Internet wagering, new restrictions on the marketing of state lotteries, which often target poor communities, and new funding to educate, study and treat those with gambling problems.

The report also suggests tighter restrictions on Indian casinos, a ban on gambling cruise ships, a ban on donations to state and local political campaigns from gambling interests, and establishment of a nationwide legal minimum age of 21 for placing wagers. States are urged to prohibit “instant games” such as video poker and keno, which are considered to be highly addictive.

Although it carries no legal authority, the 350-page document is expected to bolster the push for new anti-gambling legislation at the federal and state levels, even while it protects some of the interests of major Las Vegas casinos. In a rare show of unity, the commission, made up of both critics and supporters of the industry, voted 9-0 to approve the report.

The report contains nearly 70 recommendations for slowing the rise in compulsive gambling, a disorder that has only recently gained wide attention.

“We’re going to pick out a couple of the most key things and put them into legislation,” said Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who co-authored the bill to create the panel. Pending legislation to stop Internet gambling--one of the biggest new markets--and to prohibit so-called “cruises to nowhere” should gain a huge boost from the report, which for the first time documents the ravages of compulsive wagering, Wolf said.

Until now, the accounts of divorces, bankruptcies, suicides and other social ills associated with gambling have been largely anecdotal, he said. The last federal study of gambling, more than two decades ago, made only passing reference to compulsive wagering. Since then, total gambling losses in America have increased fivefold to more than $50 billion a year.

According to the report, the social costs from those losses total at least $6 billion a year, although many experts consider the figure far too conservative.

“How does one quantify the death of the 16-year-old boy in Atlantic City [N.J.] who slit his wrists after losing $6,000 on lottery tickets?” Wolf asked. “How does one calculate the cost of the two children that died while locked in cars as their parents gambled in nearby casinos?”

Anti-gambling activists, who have spawned an aggressive backlash against the industry from the Indian reservations of California to the riverboat casinos of the Mississippi, welcomed the report as an important new weapon in their continuing fight.

“It gives our side a club,” said Bernie Horn, a lobbyist for the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling. “Personally, I could have written it using stronger language, but I don’t think I could have broadened the scope. We’re having a press conference [today] to declare victory.”

But casino interests also claimed victory as the two sides struggled to control public perception. The American Gaming Assn., which represents the major commercial casino operators in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and elsewhere, stopped short of giving the report a complete endorsement but did brand it a boon to the industry.

“The commission unanimously talks about the acceptability of gambling in the United States today,” said Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., the organization’s president. “Acceptability is important.” The report’s own language says gambling has “become part of our culture,” he said.

Just as important, the commission concludes that gambling, except for tribal and Internet gaming, should continue to be regulated by state governments, not by Washington, Fahrenkopf said. One of the industry’s biggest fears throughout the two-year study was that the federal government would attempt to tax and regulate the industry.

Through intensive lobbying, the industry was able to gain several seats on the commission, muting some of its investigative power.

Experts disagree on whether the study will lead to any meaningful action.

“The report will sink without making a ripple,” said I. Nelson Rose, a nationally known expert who has served as a consultant to government and the industry. While he acknowledged that debate before the commission has raised national awareness of gambling issues, Rose criticized the highly politicized makeup of the panel as ineffective and called its findings “naive.”

“There will never be a moratorium,” Rose said. “What state--or Indian tribe, for that matter--is going to be willing to sacrifice themselves [by restricting new gambling] and see the money flowing out to their neighbors?”

Richard J. Rosenthal, founder of the California Council on Problem Gambling, also questioned whether the recommendations will be widely adopted but said the debate has fostered important change.

A new body of research has been developed and political leaders nationwide have become more aware of the issues, he said.

“We’re no longer going to be able to rely on anecdotes and guestimates” when dealing with the social impact, he said. “The bar has been raised in terms of gambling research.”

Earlier this year, when the commission began drafting its report, representatives of tribal gambling expressed alarm that they might be singled out for criticism and that the economic and social benefits to previously impoverished tribes might get short shrift.

At a news conference Thursday, however, leaders of the National Indian Gaming Assn. gave general support to the final document while expressing fears over how a moratorium might affect individual tribes.

“A pause in Indian gambling would be devastating,” said Anthony R. Pico, chairman of the Viejas Band of the Kumeyaay Indians in San Diego County.

Cooper reported from Washington and Ferrell from Los Angeles.