Boston Globe

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Letters to the Editor
Boston Globe
The New York Times Company
135 Morrissey Boulevard, Post Office Box 2378
Boston, MA 02107-2378

Dear Editor:

Our organization does not advocate gaming in a particular state or locality, and we do not take a position in the current legislative battle in Massachusetts. We believe that it is up to the people of an individual state to decide whether gaming is right for them—a right granted by the 10th Amendment. But what we do take issue with is the selective presentation of information to suit a particular position. This was evident in your paper’s March 26 editorial “The casino compulsion.”

The first example of misleading information was contained in the numbers of “problem and pathological gamblers” you report. The American Psychiatric Association recognizes only one clinical classification for gambling disorders: pathological gambling. Problem gambling, while a commonly used term, has no clinical meaning. In fact, this classification is so vague that a 1997 study by Harvard Medical School’s Division on Addictions said that individuals in this category could be either moving toward or away from a pathological state.

The truth is, the overwhelming majority of Americans gamble for entertainment with no adverse consequences whatsoever. There is a small percentage of the population, however—anywhere from 0.9 percent to 1.29 percent, according to recent estimates by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences and Harvard Medical School’s Division on Addictions—that cannot gamble responsibly. The extent of this problem has remained relatively constant over time, despite rapid growth of the industry during the past 20 years. However, because it is our position that one problem gambler is one too many, the casino gaming industry has taken an aggressive stand on this issue.

In 1996, the casino industry—led by the American Gaming Association—founded the National Center for Responsible Gaming, the only organization devoted exclusively to funding independent research on disordered and underage gambling. Since its inception, the NCRG has awarded more than $2.5 million in grants to leading academic institutions and research organizations, with industry donations of more than $5 million.

The American Gaming Association also is conducting an ongoing Responsible Gaming National Education Campaign to promote public and employee awareness of this issue. Our organization has submitted formal recommendations to the federal commission studying the impact of gambling in the United States calling for all sectors of the gaming industry to join our effort to determine the causes of gambling addiction so that we can better identify appropriate prevention, education and treatment methods.

While you are quick to take a cheap swing at casinos and their responsibility for gambling addiction, you fail to mention that the casino industry is the only segment of the gaming industry that has devoted significant resources to addressing this problem. Commercial casinos operate in 10 states. Lotteries operate in 37 states—including a $13.8 billion lottery in your own state—plus the District of Columbia. And yet few, if any, state governments contribute to this effort.

While you concede that casinos create jobs, you support your pre-conceived notions about the types of jobs created with anecdotal, scientifically meaningless quotes from the study. You don’t report that the average casino salary is $26,000 per year—equal to the national average and higher than comparable industry sectors such as the hotel/motel industry ($16,000), motion picture ($22,000) and other amusement and recreation sectors ($22,000). You don’t report that casinos provided better access to health care for 63 percent of the industry’s employees nationwide, better access to day care for 43 percent and health care coverage that was not available with a previous employer for 27 percent, according to a 1997 Coopers & Lybrand survey.

In testimony before the federal commission studying the impact of gambling in the United States, as well as in site visits across the country, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE)—the union that represents approximately 50,000 casino workers in the United States—has demonstrated how the commercial casino industry can and does create good quality jobs in the service sector, serving as a tool for economic development in communities with high levels of poverty and unemployment and providing good quality jobs for people who need them most, particularly the unemployed and underemployed.

Before you single out casinos as the cause of gambling addiction to suit your own purposes, I would urge you to examine and present all the facts, allowing readers to make their own decisions. I would also urge you to take a closer look at how other segments of the gaming industry already operating in your state could follow the lead of the casino industry by addressing the problem of gambling addiction with a similar dedication of time and financial resources.

Sincerely,

Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr.