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10/21/2008: Canada’s Gambling Watch Network’s e-mailed Newsletter
Volume 10 Issue 009 CWE October 20 2008
Youth
Youth Gambling Naturally Follows Competitive Sports Culture is a very worrisome item from a radio discussion. If it is true, it is more than time that we all work together to get our present culture changed!
The national fixation with sports was addressed by one caller, He asserted that sports had been a dominating force in his life, to the point that he learned simple mathematics in the second grade by using his knowledge and affinity for sports scores. “I was best at multiples of seven because of all the football I watched.”
The aura of competition penetrates all aspects of growing up. Grades are sought on a competitive basis, sports heroes are worshipped, and gambling becomes just another expression of competitiveness.
Kids calling in remembered gambling for one dollar. They were too young to have any more money, and a dollar still seemed significant. Besides, it was as much about victory as the amount won. Sports gambling combined competition with the hobby they followed voraciously.
One young adult called in to discuss his teenage gambling. He said he enjoyed himself, until he lost several games in a row, overextending himself. He learned a lesson, and was careful not to repeat the experience.Like a child who shocks himself on an electrical outlet, or a young adult who maxes out his first credit card, this was a learning experience. Yet, there are no advocates proposing that electricity or credit cards be banned. Problem gambling and compulsive gambling can be viewed the same way.
Those who continue to shock themselves after the first result obviously have a mental difficulty, and the electricity is not blamed. The students involved did not seem to blame gambling, but rather regarded the incidents as learning boundaries.
Ben Simrin, host of the radio show and a student at Berkeley High School, closed by saying, “The problem is that gambling is an extension of America’s competitive nature.Whether it is comparing salaries with friends or sporting the newest Lexus model, Americans have always enjoyed competition. From my perspective it seems like a mixed message: to discourage teenagers from college sports gambling after we’ve been raised to believe that a little competition is a good thing.” Youth Radio
Gambling’s Mobster Origin
The story of the death of one of Las Vegas founding mobsters in The 10/14/08 Casino News Media reminds us of the sad fact that the piracy character of gambling has shown itself as highly contagious in both the USA’s and Canadian’s greedy governments. Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal.
Frank Rosenthal - wiki
Washington Post obit
Cyber
Internet gamers Scrabble for title, an item in The 8/16/08 Calgary Herald, states that many of the city’s most promising young competitors, some of whom started playing Scrabble online, will be competing for $10,000 in prize money.
Sport
Long-shot bet wins $573,000, a 10/16/08 Windsor Star article, shows that sometimes a lifetime of cheering for the underdog pays off.
When the final gun went off, Stephens’ Browns had won 35-14 and the celebration was on. But it wasn’t until Tuesday morning when Stephen contacted the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation in Toronto, that he learned how much he and best friend and fellow student Jihane Belanger had won. They were the only players to successfully pick all the winners and all the long shots, beating 16,000-1 odds.
Finance
AMZ May Raise $100 Million for Casinos as Global Economy Slumps, a 10/17/08 item by Bloomberg, contains this sentence: ‘Right now there’s a proliferation of gaming in Asia that’s extremely attractive to us’.
In defense of Greed is a 10/18/08 well-written article by Niels Veldhuis of The Fraser Institute.
Alberta
Casino wins - house loses, an article in The 10/13/08 Edmonton Sun, reports that gamblers bring in millions for Enoch Cree Nation, but residents live in poor housing conditions. In spite of the fact that this year alone more than $4M of River Cree Casino’s earnings were allocated for the housing needs of Enoch Cree Nation members - that included building new houses, repairing and maintaining existing homes, providing emergency shelter and covering administrative costs - more than 400 people are on the band’s waiting list to get homes. Some of them have been waiting for 20 years. At the same time, 110 homes in the village are boarded up waiting to be condemned, the chief said.
Ontario
Fort Erie To Get Speedway What About The Ponies? - an item in the 8/16/08 Canadian Gambling News & Issues, talks of a major motor-sport speedway:
Foreign investment of approximately $200 million will come from an investment consortium that is led by Kuwaiti Islamic investment bank Bayt Al Mal Investments. 623 acres of land between Bowen Rd. and Gilmore Rd. has been purchased, and that is where the 65,000 seat complex is supposed to be built. The complex may include a theme park, hotel and automotive research facilities, according to Fort Erie Mayor Doug Martin’.) The rest of the article is full of unanswered questions about this supposed coming investment.
Follow the Leader - Archive for the Scarborough Leader is an archive to the paper, including letters to the editor on the matter of slot machines at the town’s racetrack. We see gambling not as productive but as a piracy business taking money away earned by generally hard working people.
Quebec
Mafia assets stay in Crown’s hands, a 10/16/08 CanWest News Service article, reveals that the police’s Project Colisee, a Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit investigation into the Rizzuto Mafia organization, found involvement in illegal gambling, drug smuggling and trafficking.
Reputed patriarch of Canadian crime family walks free is the heading of an article in The 10/16/08 Globe and Mail. It reports that the 84-year-old grandfather and stalwart in one of Canada’s most infamous crime families – that also involved in illegal gambling - received a suspended sentence Thursday and three years probation.
Nova Scotia
Agencies get funds to help fight gambling addiction a 10/15/08 Chronicle Herald article, reports that seven projects intended to help problem gamblers throughout the province will divide up $200,000 from the Nova Scotia Gaming Foundation this year. Our co-worker Bernie Walsh, who heads a Nova Scotia anti-gambling group called the Video Online Lottery Terminators Society, said he supports efforts to help problem gamblers. But it’s not enough, he added.
There are at least 35,000 addicted gamblers who are having problems, let alone their families, so that doesn’t go very far.
Walsh is also a former gambler who went bankrupt because of his VLT addiction.
Over the years, a lot of the research money has gone to universities to do non-essential studies, like trying to link the connection between smoking and gambling and drinking and gambling, and shying away from the real problem which is the VLT itself.
He wants the province to pull the plug on all VLTs.
That it’s more than time to pull the plug is shown by an article in The 10/17/08 Chronicle Herald with the title: Murder suspect’s VLT time didn’t break law. It tells of a murder that – if we understand the case correctly – is related to VLT gambling.
‘I can’t believe they say this stuff’ is the introduction by a former gambling addict to a press release from the NS gov’t that contains this paragraph:
Nova Scotia has one of the lowest rates of at-risk gambling in the country and fewer people are gambling overall, according to the 2007 Nova Scotia Gambling Prevalence Study released today, Oct. 16. Press Release, Nova Scotia Dept. of Health Promotion and Protection
2007 Nova Scotia Gambling Prevalence Study (text). Available in .pdf at search Gov’t of Nova Scotia
J. Deviet