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8/9/2008: Manitoba gambling patterns

Most adult Manitobans gamble, and most consider it entertainment — but the number of “moderate risk” gamblers has doubled over the last five years, according to a new study by the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba.

More than 85 per cent of Manitobans have gambled at least once in the past year, which is about average in Canada, according to the study, released Thursday.

The most popular forms of gambling in the province are raffles and fundraising tickets and lottery tickets, with about 75 per cent of survey respondents indicating they had played.

Video lottery terminals were also popular, with 28 per cent playing in the last year, and casino slot machines, at 24 per cent.

As of 2008 the population of Manitoba was 1,196,291.
14% of Manitoba residents do not gamble, 10% are classified as low risk, 4.7% as moderate risk and 1.4% are problem gamblers. The study noted the number of problem gamblers has remained consistent since a similar study in 2001, but the number of moderate gamblers had doubled. The study also found women are becoming as addicted to gambling as men.

Women are also catching up to men in other addictions, such as alcohol and drugs, Borody said.

Problem gamblers are more likely to be between the ages of 18 and 24, from a lower income bracket, single and have less education compared with their non-gambling counterparts, the study suggests.

Overall, the at-risk and problem gambling rates are slightly higher than the Canadian provincial average, but comparable to the average figures in the Prairie provinces.

A total of 6,007 Manitoba adults, 18 years and over, participated in the telephone survey in the spring of 2006 to obtain the study’s results. The margin of error for the sample is plus or minus 1.29 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

From CBC Manitoba (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2008/08/07/gambling.html)

Where are Manitobans gambling?

Raffle/fundraising tickets 75.3%
Lottery tickets 74.4%
Scratch tickets/instant win 41.7%
Video lottery terminals 27.7%
Slots in a casino 23.9%
Card games not in casino 18.0%
Bingo 12.9%
Sports pools 12.2%
Horse races 7.3%
Sport Select 6.6%
Dice/card games in a casino 6.4%
Outcome of professional sports 6.1%
Internet gambling 1.5%
Other forms of gambling 1.3%
Sports with a bookie 0.2%

Addictions Foundation of Manitoba Gambling studies and treatment (http://www.afm.mb.ca/AFM%20Library/gambling.htm)

7/14/2008: Embedding Social Responsibility

Imagine a casino throwing out a player who is gambling too much. It happens.
And when thrown out the player might never be able to enter a casino anywhere in the country again.

As public officials legalize casinos they should assure that social responsibility pervades the new gambling scene. Concern for troubled gamblers should be part of the regulatory process.
But whereas some jurisdictions pay reluctant lip service to such concerns others have shown policy leadership that could serve as a model.

In an article in International Gaming and Wagering Business Embedding Social Responsibility, William N. Thompson professor in the Department of Public Administration of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, points out the policy leadership Switzerland has developed.

Soon after the first casinos opened in 2002, management came together and created the Schweizer Casino Verband (Casino Association of Switzerland), which has worked to coordinate problem gambling programs and help program directors unify their approaches.

They now collectively call their programs the “Swiss Social Concept”.

Players at Swiss casinos must identify themselves when they enter. They must produce a passport, resident permit or Swiss driver’s license to enter. These are checked against a data base of people who either are banned from entering or have playing restrictions (such as employees and shareholders). If they have no ID they cannot enter. If they are on a banned list they are asked to leave. All reception areas display informational brochures on problem gambling available in German, French and Italian. These describe problem gambling and its effects and include a checklist of symptoms. They provide a phone number to a 24-hour hot line and a Web site indicating how to get help.

Within each casino the Social Concept is administrated by a special committee that works with front-line employees and an outside specialist, typically a psychologist. Staff training is conducted by addictions professionals. Orientation for new employees includes four hours on problem gambling. After 90 days on the job employees attend a two-day seminar dealing with processes for observing players. They watch videos and become involved in role-playing. They are also trained to use written forms for observing troubled play. Supervisors and administrators attend a longer, four-day seminar which concentrates on communications with guests and co-workers. All employees attend annual refresher courses.

Thompson has taught and written extensively on politics, government policy and gaming and gaming regulation.

His article describes a different approach to the OLG’s The Winner’s Circle, which uses data from a gambler’s profile.
Rather that milk a players addiction, Thompson advocates a real attempt to treat the problem.
The question?
Can OLG afford to do this in spite of high losses and suicides?

7/11/2008: Dificille Letter to Ottawa Citizen Slots profit too low

Two Ottawa area councillors want to see more profits from slot machines in their local area:

Alta Vista Councillor Peter Hume and Barrhaven Councillor Jan Harder think the province should be turning more gambling profits from slot machines over to the city. The city gets about three per cent of the take from machines at Rideau Carleton Raceway, while the two councillors say the city should be getting 10 per cent of the take.

Toronto and Ottawa municipal councillors want the same.

Letter to the editor: Ottawa Citizen

Stop and think a minute
This is not slots profit, 3 million dollars is that small part of 100 million dollars from the area slots,
giving back a small portion of community money.
Your own money.
Add to that, a similar amount for pari-mutual betting,
Add to that another maybe 100 million for lottery,
Add to that another maybe 100 million for Bingo and Nevada tickets etc.

To ask for 10 million, is maybe asking for 2 % of the money OLG siphons from the community.
As much as a half billion dollars is diverted from the Ottawa business community,
Probably for Toronto, as much as 3 billion dollars.

Perhaps a new term should be coined for OLG.
— G difficile — gambling gaming.

P. S. Don’t forget to factor in what crosses the river to Hull.
OLG diverts about 200,000 plus jobs into what?
Certainly not into community business where it belongs.
Perhaps, no doubt, SARS would be cheaper to have than OLG.
At least SARS is honest.
Difficile means difficult, G could be government, gambling, gaming.
C difficile is hard to get rid of, the G word is equally difficile.

6/23/2008: The Slot

Slot.

What an ugly 4 letter word.
In the dictionary the next word is sloth, and then comes slothful.
But we are here to talk about slots.

Sittman and Pitt of Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A. developed a gambling machine in 1891 which was a precursor to the modern slot machine. It contained five drums holding a total of 50 card faces and was based on poker. This machine proved extremely popular and soon many bars in the city had one or more of the machines bar-side. Players would insert a nickel and pull a lever, which would spin the drums and the cards they held, the player hoping for a good poker hand.

There was no direct payout mechanism, so a pair of kings might get the player a free beer, whereas a royal flush could pay out cigars or drinks, the prizes wholly dependent on what was on offer at the local establishment. To make the odds better for the house, two cards were typically removed from the deck the ten of spades and the jack of hearts which cut the odds of winning a royal flush by half. The drums could also be re-arranged to further reduce a player’s chance of winning.

The first one-armed bandit was invented in 1887 by Charles Fey of San Francisco U.S.A, who devised a much simpler automatic mechanism. due to the vast number of possible wins with the original poker card based game, it proved practically impossible to come up with a way to make a machine capable of making an automatic pay-out for all possible winning combinations. Charles Fey devised a machine with three spinning reels containing a total of five symbols – horseshoes, diamonds, spades, hearts and a Liberty Bell which also gave the machine its name. By replacing ten cards with five symbols and using three reels instead of five drums, the complexity of reading a win was considerably reduced, allowing Fey to devise an effective automatic payout mechanism. Three bells in a row produced the biggest payoff, ten nickels. Liberty Bell was a huge success and spawned a thriving mechanical gaming device industry. Even when the use of these gambling devices was banned in his home state after a few years, Fey still couldn’t keep up with demand for the game elsewhere.

Another early machine gave out winnings in the form of fruit flavored chewing gums with pictures of the flavors as symbols on the reels. The popular cherry and melon symbols derive from this machine. The BAR symbol now common in slot machines was derived from an early logo of the Bell Fruit Gum Company. In 1964, Bally developed the first fully electromechanical slot machine called Money Honey. The new electromechanical approach allowed Money Honey to be the first slot machine with a bottomless hopper and automatic payout, of up to 500 coins, without the help of an attendant.
The first video slot machine to offer a second-screen bonus round was Reel ‘Em In developed by W M S Industries Co. in 1996.

In 2007 a class action suit was brought against The Atlantic Lottery Corporation, by Ches Crosbie Barristers on behalf of the Piercy family and all residents of Newfoundland and Labrador.

earlier Gambling Watch Global coverage

Read the Affidavit of Kevin Harrigan, PhD; University of Waterloo in Ontario.
Harrigan explains the insides of a modern slot machine.

In the early 50s, B F Skinner, a psychologist testing animals for a process called intermittent rewarding made this statement: ”pigeon, rat, or human, all can become addicted to this process.”

This is the process used by slot machine.
There are also standard 3 - 5 reel slot machines, of various types.
These are the typical one-armed bandits.
The one armed bandits proved to be very popular, read addictive.
This was the initial cocaine effect.

Much later came the term which soon became a label; the crack cocaine of gambling.
Slots, VLTs, are the equivalent of designer drugs and very effective.

Addiction comes as the result of all the added special effects, lights, music, even theme music and bells to signal everyone around that this slot machine paid out.

A moderate slot in one of Ontario’s smaller race tracks will earn 300 dollars per day.
A slot at a place such as Woodbine, will earn over $600 per day.
For the owner, not the player, btw.

There are some 24,000 slots in Ontario.
24,000 x $600.00 = 14 million/day = 5 +/- billion yearly.
Machines have no union for their owners to deal with.
Yes the gambling industry does provide some 7,000 jobs in the province, but it wastes some 100,000 plus job expenditures that bypass small businesses.
If, as we are told, small business is the economic engine for provinces such as Ontario, how can we have a government starve this engine by spending millions of dollars promoting gambling and ignoring the social cost?

Worse still in 2004, a report saying there were some 450,000 addicted gamblers in Ontario.
Is this duty of care to turn a tax paying citizen into a criminal or a a service needy citizen.

Probe into addictive gambling slot machines launched in the UK.

4/22/2008: Side effects

But suicides are a real side effect

Nearly fifty years of community pharmacy gave me a little insight into addiction and side effects of drugs.
The reluctance of the CGA to admit that the creation of nearly half a million gambling addicts, a number published for Ontario, is a fair price, not to mention anywhere from 2000 to possibly many more gambling suicides.
Entertainment is not something one would suspect of an overdose, sure, one can overeat, one can drink
a little to much, pass out… but cause suicide.
Well, B F Skinner did warn, pigeon, rat, or human, gambling is addictive.
Yes addiction has consequences
But then, to turn around and blame the “player”, that is a little too much.
In Quebec, suicide warning appear over the VLTs.
Don”t see those warnings with OLG products in Ontario.
see previous post

4/4/2008: Quebec delays casino opening because of suicide

CBC:

Loto-Québec cancelled plans to announce it was building a new casino Friday because the body of a suicide victim had been found under a bridge near the Montreal casino Wednesday night.

The man had been at the casino just before he killed himself, according to Loto-Québec spokesman Jean-Pierre Roy.

The man’s family contacted police Wednesday evening saying he was distressed and that he was gambling, police said.

An hour later, the man’s body was found under the Pont-des-Îles, the bridge to Île-Notre-Dame, the island on which the casino stands.

Police confirmed that the death was a suicide.

Loto-Québec has recently been trying to address the problem of gambling-related suicides.

Bill Clement a Quebec anti-poverty activist who fought for the release of gambling related suicide statistics says the delay is not enough.

“We have another case and point of where gambling can ultimately lead people, very sadly, and we think there should be a moratorium on any future expansion of gambling, which would include the Mont-Tremblant casino,” Bill Clennett said Friday.

The province needs to discuss the issue, either via a public debate or a parliamentary committee, before considering new gambling opportunities for the public, he added.

Loto-Québec should also reconsider its recent move to open the Lac Leamy casino in Gatineau 24 hours a day, Clennett said.

2/13/2008: Quebec suicides

Anti poverty advocate Bill Clennett fought for five years using the Freedom of Information Act to obtain information on how many gambling related suicides were known by Lotto-Quebec.

The man played blackjack for hours with a smile on his face, changed his clothes around lunchtime, then played some more in the afternoon.

He left the Montreal Casino around 8:30 p.m. that spring night, down $4,500, and then fatally shot himself in his car with a small hunting rifle.

A five-year legal fight by Loto-Quebec to keep such stories secret came to an abrupt end with this week’s release of more than 150 documents about gambling-related suicides and other incidents at the province’s casinos.

“Loto-Quebec did everything to prevent this information from being released,” activist Bill Clennett, who launched the legal battle with an access to information request, said Tuesday.

Loto-Quebec released the documents on Monday after losing a Quebec Court of Appeal decision last December.

The documents show there were two suicides at Quebec casinos between 1999 and 2007.

They also provide details on how spectacular losses, in one case as much as $50,000 in a single visit, led six other people to attempt suicide.

Brian Yealland Gambling Watch Network Canada:

We would like complete transparency for the public in regards to all aspects of gambling, especially in regard to the impact it has on people’s lives.

The Quebec coronor lined 32 deaths in 2004 to pathological gambling.

For Yealland, there is a simple explanation behind Loto-Quebec long-held reluctance to release information about the two deaths at its casinos.

“Suicide is embarrassing for them,” he said.

Gambling Watch Canada’s Sol Boxenbaum of Viva Consulting:

Gambling critic Sol Boxenbaum said the numbers were likely much higher, and that it was immaterial where the suicides took place. CTV

“It doesn’t matter to me whether the person commits suicide in the building or whether they go home and commit suicide in their basement or garage. It’s still a life lost”

CBC:

Clennett said the reports released by Loto-Québec show only a fraction of the destruction wrought by the province’s reliance on gambling.

Many lives are destroyed before anyone ever takes their own life, he said, arguing that Quebec could create a fiscal policy that doesn’t rely on gambling revenues to fund government programs.

“We’re oblivious to the fact that the social cost of gambling makes it not a very economic, viable way to go and the human cost of it makes it totally immoral,” he said.

Released information to date 170 incident reports:
- 2 suicides
- 6 attempted suicides at Casino de Montréal & Gatineau’s Lac-Leamy casino 1999 and 2007
- 150 other incidents between 1999 and 2002

10/29/2007: US Military Veterans - Upswing in Problem Gambling

Medscape

Pathological gambling (PG) is more prevalent among military veterans than in the US general population and may be associated with combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), results of a new study suggest.

The findings were presented here at the American Psychiatric Association 59th Institute on Psychiatric Services.

…Pathologic Gamblers

All subjects were seen between June and September 2006. They completed the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) and a demographic questionnaire. All responses were anonymous. Data for 120 subjects were analyzed. Sex was 100% male, 75% were 56 to 60 years old, 92% were combat veterans, 80% were Vietnam vets, 71% were married or in committed relationships, and 75% had a VA diagnosis of PTSD.

The authors found that 85% of the participants had gambled sometime in the past year, and 20% of the total were classified as “probable pathologic gamblers” based on SOGS. Another 4.2% were classified as “problem gamblers.”

…The researchers conclude that the rate of current PG as assessed by the SOGS was much higher for these veterans than for the general US population. While PTSD or combat exposure could not be specifically linked to PG, the findings suggest the importance of further investigating possible connections in clinical populations of veterans, they write. Study participation was not perceived as distressing by most participants, but it was moderately distressing to those with gambling problems.

“Pathological gambling in a clinical sample of US combat veterans is very high compared with its prevalence in the general population,” Dr. Hierholzer told Medscape Psychiatry. “One next step would be to look at the broader veteran population.”

Tara Strine, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, Georgia, said, “This study is interesting because it shows that a high percentage — 20% — of these folks [veterans] are classified as having problematic gambling.

9/27/2007: Gamble Aware - UK

Gamble Aware has been added to the link section of Gambling Watch Global.

The UK site provides information on how gambling works, how to get help and recognizing a problem.

Don’t gamble unless you know the facts. Being responsible about gambling means knowing whether to gamble and how much money or time to spend.

9/24/2007: Women hide gambling addiction more easily than men

In the last two years, Northern Nevada has seen the largest spike ever of women seeking help for gambling addiction.

Two-thirds of those who currently attend meetings at the Northern Nevada chapters of Gamblers Anonymous in Reno and Carson City are women.

The latest marketing techniques in gaming all reflect the needs and wants of one demographic - women.

“Gambling used to be the men enter smoke-filled rooms and sit around a card table and lose their money. The women were there to watch and look pretty,” said Denise F. Quirk, clinical director and CEO of the Reno Problem Gambling Center. “Now, look who they’re catering to.”

Las Vegas used to be a gambling capital for men. Women wanted in, and the gambling industry began to market to them. Spas instead of sports bars and high end shopping sprang up. The article proves the point by showing a top Google search for gambling and women.
It’s a site geared for the woman gambler, promoting gambling as escape.

Paula Chung, a reformed gambler and the first certified gambling counselor intern in Nevada, said women can often hide gambling addiction more easily than men.

“It’s usually late-onset,” she said. “Maybe they were raised in a family where the father was a gambler. But it can be tied to empty nest syndrome. Maybe they’re angry, tired, stressed - they get caught up in the gambling. You go into the casino and everyone knows your name. Or, you can hide in the corner and be anonymous - nobody will see you. You can play the machine and escape.

“Women are terribly co-dependent. We try to fix everything instead of trying to fix ourselves. When the kids are in school, we’re in the casino. Then we rush home and pretend everything’s OK and go on with the task of helping everyone else.”

How good are women at hiding a gambling addiction?

One recent local example comes to mind for Chung.

“I just shared a story with my group of the woman in Minden who embezzled $44,000 from the DMV. That’s what we do,” she said. “It’s the average Joe. The person at the PTA meeting who you’d never expect in a million years. Often, the husbands don’t even know until the police show up.”

Local casino marketers were hesitant to comment on whether they market directly to women, using incentives like free dinners or trips to the salon with points accumulated on a rewards card to entice the female gambler.

One, speaking on a condition of anonymity, simply said, “Our rewards system is for everyone.”

“I do believe they’re catering to women,” Chung said. “Have you gone to a casino and the woman has the card hooked to the elastic thingy? I call that the slot machine IV. And that’s the really big thing, they think, ‘I’ve got a free dinner for my family.’ Well, honey, it ain’t free.”

Problem-gambling counselors said women, though hiding their problem better, often seek help faster than men - and that gives them hope.

“Women have a greater propensity to ask for voluntary treatment, which may be why we’ve seen their numbers surge,” Quirk said. “The majority of women I see from Carson and Reno are middle to upper-middle class. The ones who are homeless are the ones who were there once and gambling took them down … which shows we can’t get the help out there fast enough.”

Lahontan Valley News and Fallon Eagle Standard

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