Focus on Machines
An anthropologist affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is part of an increasing focus on the claim—central to the Loto-Quebec trial mentioned above – that gambling machines mesmerize gamblers and cause gambling addictions. Natasha Dow Schull has attracted increasing attention with her anecdotal narratives of how individual gamblers describe their interactions with gambling machines. A forthcoming book, Machine Life: Control and Compulsion in Las Vegas, will include more of the same.
Schull's narratives are used to support a range of "harm minimization" measures, some of which are being explored for gaming machines in other countries. Norway recently announced that it will allow gamblers to use only prepaid, stored-value cards for machine gambling. Norway also is imposing loss limits and maximum bet controls on gamblers and restricting them to one hour gambling sessions.
Provincial governments in Australia (Tasmania, New South Wales, and Victoria) and Canada (Nova Scotia) have experimented with limitations on length of play, eliminating access to cash machines, imposing maximum bets, and banning bill acceptors on gaming machines.
