Oregon activists oppose video poker

MEDFORD, Ore. – Newspapers refused to run the obituary that Bobby Hafemann’s mother wrote for her son in 1996, after she listed his cause of death as “suicide, thanks to the Oregon Lottery.”

Still, his family remains convinced that Hafemann shot himself in 1996 after becoming despondent over mounting debt from an addiction to state-run video poker machines.

“It’s horrible to know a machine could take over his mind so completely,” said Hafemann’s sister Ronda Hatefi, a Eugene resident who founded Oregonians for Gambling Awareness.

State data shows that of the 1,504 gamblers who entered Oregon’s problem-gambling treatment programs in 2003, 23 percent reported having suicidal thoughts in the months before entering therapy.

Oregon has offered some successful, free programs to help treat problem gamblers.

But some say it makes no sense for a public entity to offer games of chance to its residents in the first place.

“Gambling is not in the business of making winners,” said Tom Grey, executive director of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling. “People have to lose money for it to work.”

In Oregon, the social-economic costs of gambling total about $361 million, according to data provided by psychologist Jeff Marotta, who heads the state’s problem-gambling service programs.

A recent survey found that about 36,000 adult Oregonians are “problem gamblers”, with another 23,000 classified as even more seriously troubled “pathological gamblers,” according to data provided by Marotta.

Marotta said the number of problem gamblers in Oregon will likely rise if video slot machines are introduced next year. The state Lottery Commission voted earlier this month to move forward with a plan to get video slots installed in bars and taverns by July 1.

Oregon is already one of just five states to offer video poker. About 70 percent of Oregonians treated for gambling problems report video poker as their game of choice, and it is by far the biggest moneymaker for the Lottery.

And video slots can be even more addictive.

Slots are fast-paced, easy to learn and include bright colors and flashing lights that help players become “psychologically detached from reality and engrossed in a fantasy world,” according to research reviewed by Marotta in an analysis of video slots presented to the Oregon Lottery in October.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski, once an opponent of gambling as a revenue-generating strategy for the state, is hoping the expansion of gambling will generate an additional $120 million during the 2005-07 budget cycle, most of which will pay for state police troopers.

During the 2003-05 biennium, the Lottery accounted for about 7 percent – $779.8 million – of the state budget.

“He has been very candid in saying that this was not his first choice (for raising state revenue),” said Kulongoski spokeswoman Anna Richter Taylor. “The bottom line is that it became a question of having an adequate stream of funding for state police.”

Anti-gambling advocate Grey says he believes Oregon has slowly but surely become “a pathological-gambling state.”

”(Oregon’s) state government is addicted to the revenue,” Grey said. “Any (gambling game) that comes along, you’ve done it. I don’t believe the people of Oregon, when they voted to bring in a lottery, had any idea of the extent of gambling in your state in 2004.”