City, State Need To Help Gamblers
It’s difficult to comprehend a compulsion that one does not share.
How could people be so mesmerized by the lights and the sounds of a casino that they would bet away their homes, their marriages, even their lives?
Like vending machines gone haywire, gambling devices eat cash but rarely spit back so much as a can of Coke.
Nonetheless, gambling machines can be so addictive that they’ve been called “the crack cocaine of gambling.” As states, tribes and gambling casino owners rake in profits in the hundreds of millions, compulsive gamblers steadily lose millions of their own.
In Washington, the state spends $70 million on treatment for people with drug and alcohol addictions. It spends only $100,000 for the Washington State Council on Problem Gambling, which provides a toll-free help line, but no gambling treatment.
As gambling continues to grow in Washington and Idaho, it will be increasingly important to assess its social costs and provide effective treatment for compulsive gamblers.
That will require a realistic appraisal of the bankruptcy, crime and suicide that accompany addiction. These are topics that supporters of gambling seldom want to address - for fear the industry’s growth would be curtailed as a result.
But they’re exactly the issues which must be raised if a community is to weather the impact of a growing gambling industry. In some cases, hard decisions must be made to rein in this growth. In others, the answer will be improved treatment and support for problem gamblers.
The state problem gambling council plans to develop a statecertification program to train counselors to tackle this specialized field. In Spokane, there is only one chapter of Gamblers Anonymous and no counselors certified to treat people with gambling addictions.
The costs of gambling in an addict’s life stretch far beyond money. Children’s lives are damaged when their parents’ gambling leads to unemployment and divorce. Businesses are harmed when they must write off bad debt and employee theft.
In Spokane alone, gambling taxes have provided an amazing new source of revenue for the city. A portion of those funds should be set aside for treating gambling addictions.
Treatment for gamblers has similarities to that for people with other addictions. While gamblers do not need to rid their bodies of complex chemicals, they must break a powerful psychological pull.
Life becomes a profound mess for compulsive gamblers. The answer lies in redirecting their focus away from the glitter and toward that which has true significance. A tax on casino revenues could help addicts take the first steps in that slow rediscovery of the dawn.