Gambling​—The Addiction of the ’90’s

A CAMERA loaded with color film captures the sight. The picture covers a full two-​page spread in a Sunday newspaper​—almost as far as the eye can see, a giant warehouse converted into a bingo parlor, thousands of square feet of it, is alive with gaming patrons of all ages and colors. See their weary faces and bloodshot eyes, signs of hours of endless play? They anxiously await the call of the next number that, hopefully, could see them finally winning in what may have been a winless night.

Turn the pages of the newspaper. See the concerned faces of people with fists full of playing cards, fearful of holding a losing hand? In many cases thousands of dollars are won and lost at the draw of the next card. Go beyond the pictures. Can you see the sweaty palms of a nervous hand? Can you hear the rapid heartbeat, the silent prayer asking for a better hand the next time and a losing one for the other players?

Step inside the luxurious casinos in swank hotels and riverboats. Are you lost in a labyrinth of gaily colored slot machines? Are you deafened by the sound of their handles being pulled and the whirring noise of spinning reels? Win or lose, it is the sound of music to the ears of players. “The action for them is the thrill of what’s going to happen in the next pull of that slot-​machine handle,” said the head of one casino.

Wend your way through the jungle of people to the crowded roulette tables. You can be hypnotized by the spin of the wheel with its red and black compartments whirling before your eyes. The sound of the tumbling ball adds to the spell. Around and around it goes, and where it stops means the difference between winning and losing. Thousands of dollars are often lost on a single spin of the wheel.

Multiply the pictures and scenarios by the tens of thousands, the players by countless millions, and the locations by the thousands worldwide. They come by plane, train, bus, ship, and car to all parts of the world to satisfy their lust for gambling. It has been called “the hidden disease, the addiction of the ’90s: Compulsive gambling.” “I predict the 1990s will mark the historic heyday of legalized gambling throughout the world,” said researcher Durand Jacobs, a national authority on gambling behavior.

In the United States, for example, in 1993 more Americans went to casinos than to major-​league baseball parks​—92 million visits. The building of new gambling establishments seems endless. Hotel operators on the East Coast are euphoric. “There are not nearly enough existing rooms to accommodate the estimated 50,000 casino visitors a day.”

In 1994, in many of the southern states, where only a short time ago gambling was considered a sinful activity, it is now welcomed with open arms and considered a savior. “Today, the Bible Belt might as well be renamed the Blackjack Belt, with floating and land-​based casinos throughout Mississippi and Louisiana and plans for more in Florida, Texas, Alabama and Arkansas,” observed the U.S.News & World Report. Some religious leaders are now doing a 180-​degree turn in their thinking about gambling being sinful. For example, when city officials of New Orleans, Louisiana, christened its first floating casino on the Mississippi River in 1994, one clergyman offered a prayer, thanking God for “the ability to play: a virtue with which,” he said “you have blessed the city.”

By the year 2000, it is expected that 95 percent of all Americans will live within a 3- or 4-hour drive of a gambling casino. American Indians have also come in for a giant slice of the gambling pie. The U.S. government has thus far sanctioned their operation of 225 casinos and high-​stakes bingo halls nationwide, reported U.S.News & World Report.

When cardrooms, sports wagering, horse and dog racing, church bingo, and the like are added to the mix, it becomes clear how Americans legally wagered $394 billion in 1993, a 17.1-percent increase over the previous year. Those opposed to gambling are perplexed. “The biggest things we have to help people are churches and temples and the government,” said the executive director of one Council on Compulsive Gambling. “And now they’re all in the gambling business.” One American newspaper called the United States a “Gambling Nation” and said that gambling is “America’s real national pastime.”

England has started its first lottery since 1826, and sales are said to be brisk. It is also experiencing a tremendous bingo boom, reported The New York Times Magazine. “Moscow is now honeycombed with busy casinos. And Lebanese gamblers are literally risking their lives to patronize West Beirut gaming houses that draw equal fire from militiamen and religious fundamentalists,” the Times reported. “Big winners are escorted home by casino guards armed with machine guns.”

“Canadians don’t realize they are a nation of gamblers,” said a Canadian provincial gaming regulator. “There is probably, in some regards, a higher level of gaming in Canada than there is in the U.S.,” he added. “Canadians spent more than $10-​billion on legal wagers and bets last year​—almost 30 times as much as they spent on going to movies,” reported the newspaper The Globe and Mail. “The bingo industry in Canada is much more highly developed than it is or ever was in the U.S. The lottery business is much more highly developed in Canada. That’s true, too, of horse racing,” the paper said.

“No-​one knows how many gambling addicts there are in South Africa,” wrote a South African newspaper, “but there are ‘thousands’ at least.” The government of Spain, however, is well aware of its problem and of the growing number of gamblers. Official figures show that many of its 38 million inhabitants gambled away $25 billion in one year, giving Spain one of the world’s highest gambling rates. “Spaniards are inveterate gamblers,” said one man who set up an association to help gamblers. “They always have been. . . . They gamble on horses, on soccer, on lotteries and, of course, on roulette, on poker, on bingo and on those infernal money-​gobbling machines.” Only in recent years has compulsive gambling been recognized in Spain as a psychological affliction.

Available evidence suggests that Italy too has been swept along by the gambling fever. Billions are being poured into lotteries and sports but also into newspaper contests and gaming tables. “Gambling has penetrated daily life in every aspect,” said a report issued by a government-​financed research group. Today “the level of gambling has reached once-​unimaginable heights,” wrote The New York Times, “and from Government officials to parish priests the race is on to find ways to cash in.”

How true! In many cases gambling affects every aspect of the lives of people, as the following articles will show.

Compulsive Gamblers​—Always Losers

“COMPULSIVE gambling is an illness in the same way that alcoholism and drug addiction are illnesses,” declared Professor Jean Ades, from France. “It’s an addiction without a drug,” he said, and “more and more people are discovering they are addicted.” Even after the compulsive gamblers lose large sums of money, they are often obsessed with the need to make up their losses by gambling even more. “Most losers quickly get over their disappointment. But for some, the urge to gamble is so uncontrollable it can blight their lives,” wrote one newsman in France. “They keep on promising themselves they are going to kick the habit, yet it always gets the better of them. They are gambling addicts.”

Confessed one South African gambler: “If you’re a gambling addict, and you sit down at the roulette wheel or the blackjack table, nothing else matters. Adrenalin thunders through your veins, and you will bet every cent you have on just one more spin of the wheel, or fall of the card. . . . Drawing on my adrenalin reserves, I could stay awake for several days and nights at a stretch, watching the cards and numbers, and waiting for that eternally elusive super payout.” Then he concluded: “There are many others like me who can’t stop at a few hundred rands or even a few thousand. We will continue gambling until all we have is gone, and our family relationships are smashed beyond repair.”

Henry R. Lesieur, professor of sociology at St. John’s University, New York, wrote that the desire to gamble, win or lose, is so intense “that many gamblers will go for days without sleep, without eating, and even without going to the bathroom. Being in action pushes out all other concerns. During the period of anticipation, there is also a ‘rush,’ usually characterized by sweaty palms, rapid heart beat, and nausea.”

One former gambling addict admits that winning was not the driving force for his prolonged habit, but rather it was the “rush,” the thrill of gambling itself. “Gambling procures extraordinarily violent emotions,” he said. “When the roulette wheel is turning, when you’re waiting for Chance to give its answer, there’s a moment when the mind reels and you almost faint.” French gambler André agrees: “When you’ve got FF10,000 on a horse and there are 100 metres to go, someone could tell you your wife or your mother had died and you wouldn’t give a fig.”

André describes how he was able to continue gambling even after heavy losses. He borrowed from banks, friends, and loan sharks with exorbitant interest rates. He stole checks and falsified post office savings books. He seduced lonely women during his visits to casinos and then vanished with their credit cards. “By then,” wrote a French newsman, André “no longer even cared whether he would ever be able to put his disastrous finances in order. His wanderings were prompted solely by his obsession.” He turned to crime and was sent to prison. His marriage was wrecked.

In many cases compulsive gamblers, like drug addicts and alcoholics, keep on gambling, though it costs them their job, their business, their health, and, finally, their family.

Many cities in France have recently opened their doors to gambling. Where other businesses have failed, pawnshops are doing a flourishing business. Owners say gamblers frequently lose all the money they have and trade rings, watches, clothing, and other valuable items for gas money home. In some coastal towns in the United States, new pawnshops have opened; in some cases three or four or more can be found in a row.

Some have even turned to a life of crime in order to support their gambling habit. Studies conducted to date, according to Professor Lesieur, “uncovered a wide variety of illegal behaviors among compulsive gamblers . . . check forgery, embezzlement, theft, larceny, armed robbery, bookmaking, hustling, running con games, and fencing stolen goods.” Added to these are the white-​collar crimes where gamblers steal from their employers. According to Gerry T. Fulcher, director of the Institute for the Education and Treatment of Compulsive Gamblers, 85 percent of the thousands of identified compulsive gamblers admitted to stealing from their employers. “In fact, from a purely financial point of view, compulsive gambling is potentially worse than alcoholism and drug abuse combined,” he said.

Further studies have concluded that approximately two-​thirds of nonincarcerated compulsive gamblers and 97 percent of those incarcerated admit to engaging in illegal behavior to finance gambling or pay gambling-​related debts. In 1993 in Gulf Coast towns in the United States, where legalized gambling is rampant, there were 16 bank robberies, a fourfold increase over the previous year. One man robbed a total of eight banks of the sum of $89,000 to continue his gambling habit. Other banks have been robbed at gunpoint by gamblers forced to pay off large sums to creditors.

“When compulsive gamblers try to kick the habit, they go through withdrawal, much like smokers or drug addicts,” says The New York Times. Gamblers admit, however, that breaking the gambling habit can be harder than breaking other habits. “Some of us have had the experience of alcoholism and drug abuse as well,” said one, “and we all agree that compulsive gambling is far worse than any of the other addictions.” Dr. Howard Shaffer, of the Center for Addiction Studies at Harvard University, said that at least 30 percent of compulsive gamblers who try to stop “show signs of irritability or experience stomach distress, sleep disorders, higher-​than-​normal blood pressure and pulse.”

Even if they keep on betting, said Dr. Valerie Lorenz, director of the National Center for Pathological Gambling in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A., compulsive “gamblers face medical problems: chronic headaches, migraines, breathing difficulties, angina pains, heart arrhythmias and numbness in their arms and legs.”

Then there are suicides. What could be worse than what is commonly known as a “nonfatal addiction” causing death? In one American county, for example, where gambling casinos have recently opened, “the suicide rate has inexplicably doubled,” reported The New York Times Magazine, “though no health care official was willing to tie the increase to gambling.” In South Africa, three gamblers committed suicide in one week. The number of actual suicides because of gambling and debts accrued by this means, legally or illegally, is not known.

Suicide is a tragic way to end the viselike grip of gambling.

Gambling’s New Recruits​—Youths!

DO YOU shake your head in disbelief at the depth to which the adult population, both men and women, are mired in gambling addiction? Does it boggle your mind to read of adult gamblers giving up their life’s work and accomplishments​—jobs, businesses, family, and, for some, their life—​for the sake of gambling? Can you comprehend the rationale of a mature, educated adult, who, after winning $1.5 million gambling, continued playing until he lost $7 million the same night? In many cases it is greed, a chasing after the elusive dollar. All too often, however, it is the thrill of the gambling itself.

If you are parents with young children, do you take comfort in the thought that gambling is a mature adult’s game? Then think again. Consider the new young recruits waiting in the wings​—or already on the playing field. The facts may astound you.

The following caption texts of articles appeared in recent newspapers and magazines: “Odds Are Good Gambling May Be Teen Vice of ’90s.” “More Youth Hooked by Gambling.” “‘Crack of the ’90s’: Gambling Hooks Kids.” “My Son Couldn’t Stop Gambling.”

Now, read below the headlines. “Authorities blame the crisis largely on the proliferation of state- and church-​sponsored gambling,” wrote one newspaper. “Today, betting is more accessible than ever to vulnerable young people. And specialists warn that more than 90 percent of compulsive adult gamblers take up the habit before they are 14,” the paper said. “It used to be most compulsives started gambling around age 14. Now we are seeing it drop to age 9 or 10,” said another researcher. “Why? Because the opportunity is there,” she added. “Kids . . . are bombarded with gambling advertising everywhere. It’s socially acceptable excitement.” “It’s getting worse fast,” said a spokesman for a group called Gamblers Anonymous. “The kids are starting at younger and younger ages, and more of them are getting caught up in it than ever before.”

According to a study of teenage gamblers in one American state, about 3.5 percent were potentially compulsive gamblers; another 9 percent were likely to become “high-​risk” gamblers. “Typically, the numbers have shown that there are higher rates of gambling among youth than there are in the general adult population,” said William C. Phillips, coordinator of counseling services at one American college. “We will face in the next decade or so more problems with youth gambling than we’ll face with drug use​—particularly illicit drug use,” said another addiction counselor. Professor Henry Lesieur conducted a study of junior and senior high school students. The Los Angeles Times reported that “his findings are strikingly similar to the study of college students: The percentages of teen-​agers ranking as ‘pathological’ or ‘compulsive’ gamblers​—people who have lost control of their gambling activity—​average about 5% of the teen-​age population nationwide.”

Gambling therapists agree that it is not the numbers of youthful gamblers that concern them but rather the “attitude of kids, parents and even educators about teen gambling. . . . Many kids and their parents consider gambling a ‘harmless diversion,’ with consequences much less serious than those from involvement with drugs and alcohol or violence or promiscuity.” But behaviorist counselor Durand Jacobs warned that gambling can expose youngsters to crime, truancy, and a desire for easy money.

Consider, for example, one high school student who began gambling at an early age. While in school he spent many of his class hours gambling with other students. When he lost and his allowance was gone, he stole money from funds that students had contributed for food baskets for needy families. By gambling the stolen money, he hoped to buy back his own family’s television set and an onyx ring that he had pawned to pay off earlier gambling debts. By the time he was in the ninth grade, he had already spent 20 days in a juvenile home for stealing $1,500 and was heavily into dollar-​ante poker and $5-a-rack pool. “As I got older, the amounts got higher,” he said. Soon he was stealing from his neighbors to pay his gambling debts. His mother was in despair. By age 18 he had become a compulsive gambler.

In England, sociologists say, soft gambling laws allow children to play slot machines. In airports and arcades, large numbers of children support their addiction by stealing from their parents and by shoplifting.

“Among youth, the most popular and fastest-​growing form of gambling on junior high, high school and college campuses is sports betting among [the students] themselves, sometimes backed by local bookies,” said Jacobs. “I would predict that there are very few high school and college campuses that don’t have well-​organized and high-​stakes sports pools.” Added to this are the card games, lotteries, and casinos that many teens are allowed into because of looking older than their years.

“One of the points that has to be made,” said Jacobs, “is that most of the people went on to be compulsive gamblers because when they started as teen-​agers, they were winners.” “The ‘overwhelming majority’ of young people, he said, were introduced to gambling by their parents or relatives who condoned it as fun and games,” continued The Los Angeles Times. Another substance-​abuse counselor added his voice: “Parents have got to look at the same old issue they’ve had to deal with in alcohol and drugs. I just think the more you expand gambling, the more new recruits to the compulsive gambling club occur.” Specialists who treat compulsive gamblers say that just as with drugs and alcohol, when hooked on gambling more and more juveniles are supporting their addiction by stealing, peddling drugs, and prostituting themselves. Parents may consider gambling “fun and games,” but police officials do not.

“Kids who became hooked on slot machines . . . displayed all the destructive traits of adult compulsive gamblers. Youngsters who got addicted to these slot machines might have started at the age of 9 or 10. They ran through their pocket money, school dinner money, and loose change around the house. A year or two on and boys began stealing things. Everything would be sold from the child’s own room, bats, books, even treasures like record players: other children would find their own toys gone too. Nothing in the house was safe. Moody heard of desperate mothers piling up their possessions in one room so as to sit guard over them, or having to hide their handbags under the bedclothes when they went to sleep. Frantic, such mothers could no more comprehend what was happening to their offspring than nesting birds robbed by a cuckoo. The kids still managed to steal from somewhere. By the age of 16, the police would be knocking on the door.”​—Easy Money: Inside the Gambler’s Mind, by David Spanier.

As it has been pointed out in these articles, many adults and young people have been introduced to gambling through their churches​—bingo, lotteries, and so forth. Should religious institutions and their leaders who claim to be followers of Christ encourage, promote, and abet gambling in any form? Hardly! Gambling in all its aspects appeals to one of the worst qualities in humans, the desire to get something for nothing, or, more bluntly put, greed. Those who promote it encourage people to believe it is right to profit from the losses of others. Would Jesus promote such activity when it brings family breakup, shame, ill health, and the destruction of one’s life? Never! Rather, God’s inspired Word makes clear that greedy persons will not inherit God’s Kingdom.​—1 Corinthians 6:9, 10.

Parents must teach their children at an early age that gambling in any form is wrong. Do not view it as fun and games but rather as the beginning of laziness, lying, cheating, and dishonesty. In many cities assistance programs, such as Gamblers Anonymous, have been set up. More important, if you have a problem, seek out the inspired counsel contained in God’s Word, the Bible. Some who have contemplated suicide say they owe their lives to heeding such inspired advice.

Interestingly, Jehovah’s Witnesses have helped many who were caught in the snare of compulsive gambling to break free. One such former compulsive gambler wrote that after many years of involvement in vices, including heavy gambling, “immediate and dramatic changes of conduct began to occur as my girlfriend and I studied the Bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Gambling was an addictive force, and it proved to be most difficult to manage. With Jehovah’s help and the support of my girlfriend​—along with study, prayer, and meditation, especially on God’s view of greed—​this gambling addiction came under control, and my girlfriend, who has now been my wife for 38 years, and I both dedicated our lives to Jehovah. Though we have served where the need is greater and in full-​time service for years and I have served as a traveling representative of the Watchtower Society, my addiction is still present and is controlled only with Jehovah’s help and guidance.”

If gambling is a problem for you, can you be set free of the addiction? Yes, if you continue to avail yourself of God’s help and offer it to others who may be in need of it.

[Blurb on page 9]

Soon there will be more problems with youths gambling than with drugs

[Blurb on page 11]

Greedy persons will not inherit God’s Kingdom

[Box on page 10]

Gambling Chips Welcome at Las Vegas Catholic Shrine

Visitors to the Shrine of the Most Holy Redeemer often ask the priest: “Father, will you pray for me to win?”

Millions of people visit Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A., every year from all parts of the world to test the whims of Lady Luck. In the warmly lit sanctuary of this Roman Catholic Church, where statues of the Nativity, the Last Supper, and the Crucifixion appear along the walls, gambling proceeds are put to use in the pews: Worshipers put casino chips into the collection plate.

“Now and then we’ll find a $500 chip in one of the plates,” Father Leary of the shrine said in a soft Irish brogue.

A Roman Catholic church farther up the Las Vegas Strip served the worshipers for decades, but when four of the world’s largest hotel-​casinos​—the MGM Grand, the Luxor, the Excalibur, and the Tropicana—​were built at the south end of the Strip, the new Shrine of the Most Holy Redeemer was built just one block away.

When the priest was asked why this was done, he said: “Why not? That’s where the people are.”

It’s also where the money is. So why not?

[Picture on page 9]

Gambling leads to bad associations