United States of America
09May07 - Las Vegas Review-Journal:
For the 11th straight time since it began surveying the public's attitude toward legalized gambling, the American Gaming Association said Tuesday the U.S. commercial casino industry took in record revenues.
The gaming industry's Washington, D.C.-based lobbying arm said 460 commercial casinos in 11 states collected more than $32.4 billion from gamblers in 2006, almost 7 percent more than was reported in 2005. The total doesn't include gambling revenues collected by American Indian casinos or slot machines at horse and dog racetracks around the country, commonly referred to as racinos.
Nevada continued to be the nation's No. 1 gaming revenue producer with $12.6 billion, more than double second place New Jersey.
In addition, Washington, D.C.-based pollster Peter Hart, who conducted the survey for the association, said four out of five Americans believe gambling is an acceptable activity for themselves or others.
11Feb07 - Daily Press:
A comprehensive study of problem gambling in California finds that 3.7 percent of the state population has a lifetime problem or are pathological gamblers. That means that 750,000 to 1 million Californians have serious gambling issues.
16Jan07 - Gannett News Service:
Today, 42 states operate lotteries, 37 have commercial, Indian or racetrack casinos and only 2 - Utah and Hawaii - don't allow any form of gambling. The gambling industry is a multi-billion dollar business, raking in $84.8 billion in 2005 alone.
12JAN07 - Key findings in Casino City's North American Gaming Almanac:
* U.S. gaming revenue grew 6.56 percent in 2005 to reach an all-time high of $84.8 billion, or 0.69 percent of total U.S. GDP.
* Casino and card room gaming accounted for 38 percent of total gaming revenue, lotteries for 27 percent, and tribal gaming, 27 percent.
* The largest growth, an increase of over 19 percent, was seen in tribal gaming.
* Revenue from lotteries grew by 4.24 percent and casino gaming grew by 2.63 percent.
* Charitable gaming held its own in 2005 after a slight decline the previous year, and race and sports wagering saw a decline.
* Of the 49 U.S. states (including the District of Columbia) with some form of legalized gaming, Maine, while being among the lowest ranked in terms of gaming revenue in 2005, experienced the highest growth with a 69.99 percent increase in 2005 revenues over 2004.
08Jun06 – Allentown (PA) Morning Call - There is a direct link between problem gambling and an increased incidence of divorce, child abuse, domestic violence, bankruptcy, crime and suicide. Americans now spend more money gambling each year than on groceries. Yet, 12 million citizens go hungry every day. Nationwide, there are more than 5 million pathological or problem gamblers. Half of them are young people; another 15 million are at risk. And, 5 percent to 8 percent of American youth already are addicted to gambling.
Studies say it usually takes three years for the social and economic effects to appear. In South Dakota, video poker added $92 million a year to government coffers, but it cost the state $272 million a year in crime, bankruptcies and other problems. The Pennsylvania Family Institute estimates that for every $1 of tax revenue generated by gambling, taxpayers will pay $3 in increased social costs.
24May06 – Las Vegas Review-Journal – Americans can wager legally in almost 900 casinos, 455 Las Vegas-style casinos operate in 11 states and 406 casinos on American Indian reservation in 29 states. In addition, 11 states operate racetrack-casino combinations, known as racinos, and nine states are exploring laws that would allow their existing racetracks to convert to racinos.
Americans are wagering more dollars in casinos, at racetracks and through state lotteries, but they're not too happy about it, a survey released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press suggests.
The study found that seven out of 10 people questioned believe that legalized gambling encourages folks to spend more money than they can afford on the activity. The Washington, D.C.-based center called the finding a "modest backlash" toward legalized gambling despite a decade-long explosion in the growth of states offering casino gambling and the boom over the past few years in online wagering Web sites.
While 70 percent of Americans say legalized gambling encourages people to gamble more money than they can handle, 62 percent expressed similar reservations, according to Gallup in 1989.
10Apr06 – U.S. News & World Report - Each year Americans lose $80 billion to gambling in its various forms -- from casinos to bingo to online gambling to horse racing. Forty-eight states have some form of legalized gambling – Utah and Hawaii are the only exceptions. There are more than 1,200 casinos, card rooms and bingo parlors in the U.S. And casino gambling is extremely popular. About 73 million Americans visited a casino in 2005 -- up from the more than 53 million that did so in 2000. The rate at which patrons visit casinos is growing, too. The average gambler visits a casino six times a year, which is almost double the number of trips 10 years ago. But state lotteries are also extremely popular -- 42 states run them, according to the Education Commission of the States (ECS). Total lottery profits in the U.S. in 2004 amounted to almost $14 billion.
08Mar06 - The National Council on Problem Gambling kicked off an education campaign this week by noting that 2 percent to 3 percent of Americans - or about 6 to 9 million adults - have gambling problems.
It is bad news for the casino industry - it's two or three times as high as the 1 percent rate often cited by the industry.
The National Council's estimate is based on the most recent original research available on gambling problems nationwide, Executive Director Keith Whyte said. The 1 percent rate often cited by the casino industry represents only a narrow category of people defined by treatment experts as "pathological gamblers," he said. "It's a fairly limited number that doesn't represent the full scope of people with gambling problems." The industry-cited number is taken from a 1997 study that collected and extrapolated from much of the previous available research on the subject.
The study was co-authored by Howard Shaffer, director of the Division on Addictions at Harvard Medical School. The Harvard division received a $2.4 million grant from the casino industry in 2000 to establish the Institute for Research on Pathological Gambling and Related Disorders, which has distributed grant money to research institutes worldwide and has funded a large chunk of the available research on problem gambling.
The 2 percent to 3 percent estimate cited by the National Council is based on a more representative group of people who showed signs of problem gambling behavior in the past year, not just "pathological gamblers" who exhibited the most severe problems, Whyte said.
A University of Pennsylvania study this year (2005) found that Americans 65 and older place bets as often as any other age group, but are three times more likely to become problem gamblers.
New York Times - Each day in the United States, slot machines take in an average of more than $1 billion in wagers, the Times said. Collectively, slot machines gross more annually than McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King and Starbucks combined, the article said.
The National Gambling Impact Commission found that following a decade of expansion in the 1990s, the national lifetime compulsive gambling population had grown by at least 50 percent, to no less than 1.2 percent based on the most conservative of its source studies. It also discovered a significant trend indicating addiction had doubled in many populations within 50 miles of casinos.
24Jul05 - Time, Inc. Article - All told, 48 states have some form of legalized gambling--and none of that includes the wild frontier of the Internet. By 1996 the annual take for the U.S. gambling industry was over $47 billion, more than that from movies, music, cruise ships, spectator sports and live entertainment combined. In 2003 the figure jumped to over $72 billion.
Forty states and the District of Columbia have a lottery. Eleven states operate commercial casinos, which are up from just two in 1989. Riverboat and tribal casinos continue to proliferate.
From two states that allowed gambling in the late 1980's — Nevada and New Jersey — there are now 30 that allow or plan to allow gambling to help pay local costs.
Worldwide
28Jan07 - Benefitnews.com - The American Psychological Association estimates that 2% to 4% of Americans have an active gambling problem. As cited in Behavioral Health Management:
- People using drugs and alcohol are six times more likely than the general population to have a gambling problem.
- Pathological gambling is highly comorbid with affective disorders, especially depression.
- 20% of pathological gamblers have comorbid ADHD.
27Apr06 – Speech by MP Swire (Great Britain) – Since 2001, according to Nottingham Trent University Research, we have seen a seven-fold increase in betting alone. This amounts to 50 billion pounds per year, the equivalent of more than 800 pounds per person. The number of people using the online advice service from Gamcare has risen from 5,000 people per month to 62,000 per month today. The average debt reported by people looking for advice is 25,000 pounds.
In 2003, the total gambling expenditure by Ontario, Canada residents was estimated at $4.04 Billion, of which 35%, or $1.41 Billion, was derived from moderate-to-severe problem gamblers. In the same year, the Ontario government allocated $36 million to problem gambling prevention, treatment and research, a proportionately low amount compared to revenues.
03Apr2006 - Around the world, gambling is a fast-growing enterprise. Global Betting and Gaming Consultants calculates that gamblers worldwide lost a total of $208 billion in 2003—an average of almost $570 million a day! While the personal financial losses are astounding, there are a host of other problems that spring up from the gambling craze.
"We are finding that pathological gambling is very definitely a brain disease," says Timothy Fong, a psychiatrist and co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program. "The central question is: Were pathological gamblers born that way or are the changes in their brains the results of excessive gambling? We are far from answering that question in a meaningful way."
Pathological, or compulsive, gamblers simply cannot stop gambling, even when their losses cripple their lives. The narratives, though as unique as each life, have a similar trajectory: a fascination, then obsession with gambling, punctuated by a few wins and colossal losses often involving houses, jobs, personal relations and savings, finally resulting in a shattered life.
Nearly 20% of pathological gamblers have filed for bankruptcy protection, compared with 4.2% of non-gamblers. But perhaps a more telling, and certainly more tragic consequence, is that compulsive gamblers are nearly four times as likely to have attempted suicide than non-compulsive gamblers.
