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Ban gets
credit for steep drop in gambling addicts |
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Add By: fab |
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May 20th, 2003 |
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Banning video poker three years ago led to a
sharp drop in gambling addicts, according to the authors of an
extensive study on South Carolina's 14-year love affair with
video poker.
Within 90 days of video poker being banned
in 2000, the number of active Gamblers Anonymous groups
declined to 16 from 32. From then on, most addict treatment
groups had only one or two members instead of the previous
dozens, the study said.
"Additionally, the most active
gamblers' hot line in the state reported the number of calls
they were receiving fell from over 200 a month to zero," the
study said.
The study, a 164-page report dealing with
the mingling of politics, the law, gambling and addiction, was
done by two Columbia residents, Frank Quinn and Randall
Bridwell.
It examines how and why S.C. public officials
and video poker operators created a "casino the size of a
whole state, ‘.‘.‘. a land of trouble, of rising bankruptcies,
disintegrating families, escalating crime, damaged
productivity and lost opportunity."
Video poker -
called "the crack cocaine of gambling" - was so big, and so
addictive, that by the time it ended in mid-2000, it was doing
$3 billion in sales a year, they wrote.
Quinn, 53, is a
drug, alcohol and gambling addiction psychologist. Bridwell,
58, is a University of South Carolina law school professor.
Both were active consultants in dozens of civil lawsuits
against video poker operators in the late 1990s. One remaining
lawsuit is expected to be tried in June.
Their study
shows how South Carolina - in large part because of coziness
between politicians and video poker operators -became a
gamblers' paradise, with more gambling outlets than
Nevada.
Among the study's findings:
• In 1986,
the General Assembly initiated what would become "one of the
largest organized gambling operations in the world ... without
originally knowing what it had done." The late State Sen. Jack
Lindsay, D-Marlboro, quietly slipped a provision into a
complicated law that allowed gaming machines to give
payouts.
• State Democratic lawmakers let video poker
operators stay in business. At the same time, the operators
targeted low-income blacks - one of the Democrats' most loyal
voter bases - as their preferred customers.
•
Politicians became so addicted to money raised from video
poker that they didn't devote the necessary resources to
police the games. This meant that even though the Legislature
banned payouts of more than $125 a day in video poker per
person, operators flouted the law because they knew it
wouldn't be enforced.
• Politicians were so attracted
to taxes raised from gambling that they ignored the widespread
harm video poker did.
• Blacks and women were more
vulnerable than others to becoming video poker
addicts.
Former Democratic Party chairman Dick
Harpootlian, who led the party from 1998 until this year,
ridiculed Quinn and Bridwell's study.
"If you believe
poor people don't have any brains, I suppose you'd subscribe
to their theory that they shouldn't be allowed to decide how
to spend their money, have children or get a job," Harpootlian
said.
Harpootlian also said the nation's most famous
video poker player is not a poor Democrat, but rich Republican
William Bennett. Recently, it was revealed that Bennett, who
has written best-selling books about being virtuous, gambled
away $8 million, much of it in slots and video
poker.
The study's authors single out four heroes: U.S.
Judge Joe Anderson, S.C. Chief Justice Jean Toal, the late
Rep. Terry Haskins, R-Greenville, and State Sen. Wes
Hayes.
Operating for the most part independently of
each other, those four led the battle to destroy video
poker.
On the bench, Anderson and Toal enforced laws
that would have the effect of outlawing video poker.
In
the Legislature, Haskins fashioned a "poison pill" law that,
in certain rare circumstances, would outlaw video poker. Hayes
was vital in getting the law passed. The rare circumstances
Haskins had envisioned took place, and Toal's Supreme Court
ordered video poker shut down.
Bridwell said in his
investigations of video poker, "One of the most shocking
things is how the political system, instead of protecting poor
people from predatory behavior by video poker operators,
allowed them to be turned into a cash cow."
Quinn, who
for years had focused on traditional addictions, learned about
video poker when his drug and alcohol clients got hooked on
the games.
"One lady said, 'I lost the money we were
going to send our children to college with,'‘" Quinn said. "I
asked her how much. She said, '$80,000.'‘"
The study,
for which the writers received no pay, was published last
month in the University of Mississippi Law
Review.
Video poker, they say, isn't just any gambling
- the electric games with their colored screens, bright lights
and seemingly frequent payoffs can put players into a trance,
making it the world's most addictive form of
gambling.
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