Over 60 million Americans make some sort of wager every day. When compared to other recreations (in billions of dollars) in 1990, gambling institutions made 2.2 times more than magazine sales, 8.3 times more than book sales, 20.9 times more than theaters, and a whopping 21.8 times more than movies. This number has increased to this high level because of the growth in the amount of legalized gambling establishments and the accessibility to these establishments, both of which increase the number of gamblers. The compulsive or pathological gambler affects society the most.
According to Stuart Winston, the compulsive gambler is the backbone of gambling. Without the compulsive gambler, there would be no Las Vegas or off-track wagering. Two-thirds of the race tracks in America would close. The attendance of sporting events would drop 50%, and TV wouldn’t bother with sports beyond championship events.
The compulsive gambler bets a piece of his life every day, and a piece of his family’s. The other 45 million people who gamble are having fun. (Out of the 60 million who gamble every day) These gamblers often resort to crime to pay off their debts and anger. Even though legalized gambling has changed through time and has been accepted in America today, it remains detrimental to society and should not be legal anywhere. American gambling can be traced back to the early years of the nation.
Different forms of gambling, such as lotteries, remained popular until 1890 when U.S. jurisdiction made lotteries and all other forms of gambling illegal by direct prohibition. Gambling had become more and more of a low-life thing to do. These low-lifes, called rowdies, would bet or take a bet on anything. Most tried to look different from everyone else by wearing thick imitation gold chains, a dyed black mustache, a velvet coat, and long hair. New York City alone had about 30,000 people earning a living from gambling in the 1890s. The casinos were plush and usually had a buffet with alcohol. The operation made a lot of money, most from cheating. Each casino would hire agents to come in and claim winning keno numbers, afterwards giving most of it back to the casino. Counterfeit money was also handed out to the few people who happened to win. Any protest from a loser and he would end up with a black eye. Oscar Handlin said, “An individual may sometimes take away substantial sums of money, but in the long run, the banker must win.” Essentially, gambling hurt society in the early years of America.
For the next 25 years, gambling became unpopular again because of reports of cheating and changing American values. Anything thought of as harmful to society became illegal. For example, alcohol became illegal by Prohibition. The reintroduction of gambling resulted in the return of corruption and fraud. By the mid-1920s, state after state abolished its anti-gambling laws. Gambling had become more and more accepted because of churches holding bingo sessions and legitimate racetracks being built. In 1931, gambling became totally legalized in Nevada to replace the money the state was getting from depleted ore-rich mountains.
Organized crime started to turn toward gambling as their main source of income after Prohibition ended in 1933. These criminals made most of their money bootlegging alcohol during Prohibition, so once alcohol prices went down, they needed another way to make a lot of money fast: gambling.
Organized crime started getting more involved with gambling once Las Vegas started to boom. Bugsy Siegel, a half-insane murderer who was sent to Nevada to enforce mob control of the race wire services, opened up the first hotel/casino in Las Vegas. His hotel, the Flamingo, began a long period of gang involvement in Las Vegas. In 1947, the Desert Inn opened, run by a gang from Cleveland. A savage group of people, including the infamous Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano, established the Desert Inn in 1947. Lansky, the brains of this group, was a genius with numbers, while Luciano, the brute of the group, was a genius for finding Lansky. 1952 brought the opening of the Sahara by some run-outs from Oregon. The Sands, with Frank Sinatra as a headliner, opened in 1953, funded with Chicago mob money. This was the first attempt at bringing big-time entertainment out to Las Vegas to draw people to casinos. Tony Stralla, a hoodlum from California, opened the Stardust in 1955.
The Stardust towered over the rest of the hotels on the strip and had more luxuries inside. Each hotel became bigger than the next and all made a lot of money. Much of the money was skimmed off the top and sent around the country to different mob headquarters before taxes could be taken out. By the late 1950s, federal accusations such as the Kefauver expose and investigations by the Treasury Justice showed the mob’s involvement in Las Vegas and the ways they were stealing money from the government such as skimming. Once again, the public decided gambling was bad after the news of corruption and fraud, just like in the 1890s. Today, everyone has given gambling, a booming corporate industry, another chance. Squeaky-clean owners, such as Steve Wynn and Donald Trump, own numerous casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Each has been portrayed by the media as good guys who just happen to be making a lot of money through gambling.
They advertise gambling as a legitimate business, with corporate-style offices staffed by corporate-style employees and have stocks representing their company on the stock market. Each new hotel/casino is bigger and nicer than the next, just like in the late 1940s and early 1950s. They bring in big-time gamblers with complimentary amenities, such as free airfare and suites. Middle-class gamblers are lured to casinos by free food.
For lower-class gamblers, owners provide free transportation. Outside of Las Vegas, growth can be seen even more. State lotteries, riverboat casinos, bingo parlors, and Indian Reservation casinos can be seen allacross the country. More and more states are legalizing forms of gamblingeach year. The gambling cycle is still rising and may never come down.
This recent resurgence in gambling has tried to clear its image, but problems still exist. The growth in gambling venues has greatly increased the chances for an average person to gamble legally. This growth, in turn, has exponentially increased the number of gamblers. By the year 2000, 95% of Americans will live within a 3-4 hour drive of a casino. Today, the only two states without any kind of legal gambling are Hawaii and Utah. Because of this, the amount of money gambled legally in 1993 was 2,300% higher than the amount wagered in 1974.
From 1982-1990, Americans increased the amount of money they gambled over twice as much as their incomes increased. Despite the growth of this new, clean gambling industry, the results of gambling remain frightfully dangerous. Casino owners, while no longer street hoodlums, are still mercilessly preying on the weakness of their clients. The owners of these gambling institutions have two rules: get the people to start playing and keep them playing. They make their casinos more enticing for the average person by making themselves look like good citizens. Casino owners make donations to local charities and schools and run lucrative ads sounding as if making money at their casino will be easy and fun.
The industry has also stayed up with the times, making betting easier, more appealing, and more exciting. Harrah’s casino spends thousands of dollars each year to see whether fresher air, wider aisles, and back supports can increase gambling. The Hilton in Las Vegas even went so far as to release a scent called Odorant 1, produced by Alan Hirsch, a Chicago neurologist. This scent made the air smell fresher in a slot machine pit. These slot machines saw 45% more action than usual. Why do these casinos want each person in their casino to stay longer and bet more money? Because the odds are in favor of the house, and the more money gambled, the more the house will make. CEO and President of Claridge’s Casino in Atlantic City, Bob Renneissen, said, “Our goal is not to get more out of a customer in three hours but to get him to stay for four hours.”
In lotteries and horse racing, the house earns the same percentage from the wagers, no matter what the outcome is. This fact ensures that more money is wagered, the more money is made. In casinos, each game has a certain percentage of winning. Sportsbooks get 10%, craps gets .6-1.4%, roulette gets 5.2%, blackjack receives 2-15%, and keno gets a whopping 20%. In 1980, a math genius named Jess Marcum calculated that a craps player who made just a one-dollar bet every bet for two months straight would have a one in two trillion chance of winning $1000 before losing $1000. In contrast, if that person only plays for 25 minutes and bets $200 every time, they would increase their odds to 1.15 to 1.22. Basically, the longer the gambler stays, the more money the house will take in. The casinos of today do not need blatant fraud and corruption, like their predecessors, to make large sums of money. As long as a casino remains popular, it will make money.
The recent resurgence in gambling has created more problems in America. In 1980, Tunica, Mississippi was known as America’s Ethiopia, with around 53% of the population living in poverty. Everyone thought that building a casino would be the answer to the community’s problems. This did create new jobs for some people, but the price of land increased tenfold, and property taxes increased dramatically as the property values rose. The only people who were reaping the benefits of the casino were the rich owners and the rich real estate developers. Lotteries also end up hurting the people who need help the most. High school dropouts and people with incomes under $20,000 make up the largest percentage of lottery players. In lotteries nationwide, the poor spend $572 per year on lottery tickets, while receiving only $80 in services from increased tax revenues. Meanwhile, wealthier people spend $26 per year on lottery tickets, while receiving as much or more than that in local aid.
Even though state lotteries are supposed to be fundraisers to help people who need it, they generally hurt the poor and help the more fortunate. Local casinos always spell disaster for nearby restaurants. In Atlantic City, from 1977-1987, 101 out of 243 restaurants closed with the arrival of casinos. These nearby casinos offer free food to draw customers in, and this very expensive proposition from the owners can be written off of their annual income tax. In 1991 alone, $234 million dollars were written off of casinos’ taxes.
Why should the consumer pay for food when they can get it free at the casino? Gambling also spurs a huge increase in crime. According to United States Attorney General Kelley, between 1977, when the first casino opened in Atlantic City, and 1986, just nine years later, the incidence of larceny per capita increased by four hundred and sixty-seven percent. The incidence of all crime combined increased by 138%, and this figure includes all categories of violent crime, including rape and robbery. Since Illinois legalized riverboat gambling, funding for state police has increased 50%, or $100 million dollars per year. Charles Cozic said, “The best estimates of increased costs to Illinois’s criminal justice system from gambling appear to range between $1.03-1.18 billion dollars.” This amount of money is much more than the state has received from the casinos.
A high percentage of these problems stem from pathological or compulsive gamblers, who in 1990 cost the city of Chicago approximately $52,000 per year per gambler. They also cost the state of Maryland alone $1.5 billion dollars in lost work, productivity, stolen or embezzled monies, and state taxes not paid.
The compulsive gambler is the biggest problem that gambling produces. Most compulsive gamblers live unhappy and frightened lives. They almost always lose more than they can win, and since they are stubborn and childish, they continue to chase the lost money in a bitter, angry, driven mood. Also, they are always on the way down, losing more and more money, and going deeper and deeper in debt to banks, finance companies, relatives, and friends. Compulsive gamblers lose their tempers frequently, often striking anyone at any time. They have been known to have no limits in obtaining money.
Murder, stealing, embezzling, conning, and even resorting to prostitution, or putting their wives into prostitution, have been known ways of getting money to pay off gambling debts. People become compulsive gamblers through peer pressure and social pressure. Most are very competitive, athletic, have above-average intelligence, and are motivated to achieve. Many gamble for a death instinct, a need to lose, a wish to repeat a big win, identification, and a desire for action or excitement. Out of the three million compulsive gamblers in America, 65% are men.
The most common occupation for a compulsive gambler is an attorney, while accountants, bankers, stockbrokers, and sports figures have a higher than average percentage of compulsive gamblers. Some compulsive gamblers of today include Walter Matthau, Omar Sharif, and Larry King. These troubled people have been and will be around as long as gambling is available. Even over 100 years ago, big-name compulsive gamblers, such as W.H. Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan, lost millions of dollars gambling.
Institutions, such as the 800 Gamblers Anonymous and 300 Gam-Anon groups, have been made to help these troubled individuals, but most need professional help, which they cannot afford. Unfortunately, teenage gambling has also increased dramatically, especially in cities with legalized gambling.
According to Fred Franco Jr., a prosecutor in New Jersey, gambling is the addiction of the ’90s. These teen gamblers get an adrenaline rush when gambling, just like when taking drugs. Approximately 500 million to one billion dollars are gambled each year by underage gamblers. Even worse, the estimated 1.3 million teen gamblers, 7% of which are under the age of 18, are twice as likely to become compulsive gamblers. Another source determined that one million teenagers are compulsive gamblers out of the eight million compulsive gamblers in the country. These numbers vary so much because few institutions have researched this very major problem.
These young compulsive gamblers have the same problems as their older counterparts. Approximately 13% commit crimes to pay for their habit. They put gambling above school, friends, and their growing debt. A poll at a local Las Vegas high school showed that 400 out of 768 (52%) students had gambled illegally. Other research showed 155,000 underage gamblers were caught trying to get into Atlantic City casinos last year. Teen gambling is rapidly growing for many reasons.
First, few seem to care about or address the issue. Second, every new casino built on the Las Vegas strip has become family-oriented. The MGM Grand, Luxor, and Treasure Island, built in the last five years, and Circus Circus and Excalibur, built a few years before, all have a Disney-like environment geared towards kids. Children have to walk through casinos to get to their hotel rooms, theme parks, and video game arcades.
Third, teenage gamblers hardly ever suffer any type of severe penalty when caught trying to sneak into a casino or buy lotto tickets, so they just go to the next casino or next drug store. Finally, most young adults do not get warned about the wrongs of gambling. Parents and schools drill into their kids’ heads not to have sex, do drugs, or drink alcohol, but hardly ever even say a word against gambling. These teens are headed towards more and more problems as they get older.
Because of this huge involvement among teens, gambling had an even worse effect on society this time through the cycle. Through the years, all forms of gambling have caused major problems and should not be condoned by the government. Gambling has gone in and out of popularity through cycles where owners have gone from low-life rowdies to organized crime heads, and now big money corporation men. America is in a very dangerous cycle because of the clean, corporate-style gambling operations run today, which don’t seem to have any fraud or corruption. Also, many forms of legalized gambling have become more and more accessible.
Worst of all, as the number of compulsive gamblers has grown, the number of teenage gamblers has dramatically grown, leaving poor futures for them. The government needs to recognize the problems gambling has always produced, along with the new problems of today, and banish gambling altogether.
ENDNOTES
- Stuart Winston, Nation of Gamblers (Englewood Cliffs, NewJersey, Prentice Hall, 1984) p. 5.
- Bertha Davis, Gambling in America: AGrowth Industry (U.S.A., Impact Books, 1992) p. 12.
- Winston, p. 5.
- RufusKing, Gambling and Organized Crime (Washington, D.C., Public Affairs Press,1969), p. 11.
- Oscar Handlin, This Was America (New York, New York, Harperand Row Publishers, 1964), pp. 326-331
- Bertha Davis, p. 19
- Bertha Davis,pp. 10-20.
- Rufus King, pp. 121-122.
- Rufus King, pp. 8, 123.
- BethaDavis, p. 10.
- Bertha Davis, pp. 13-14.
- Bertha Davis, p. 27.
- JamesPopkin, America’s Gambling Craze, U.S. News and World Report, March 14(1994), p. 1.
- Ronald Clayton, Nation Raising a Generation of Gamblers,U.S.A. Today, April 5, 1995, p. 3.
- Charles Cozic, Gambling (San Diego,California, Greenhaven Press, 1995), p. 80.
- Betsy Reed, America’s NewAddiction: How the Gambling Industry is Seducing the States, Dollars andSense, July/August (1994), p. 1.
- Bertha Davis, p. 24.
- Ronald Clayton,p. 2.
- Bertha Davis, p. 11.
- James Popkin, pp. 5-6.
- James Popkin, p. 5
- James Popkin, p. 4-5.
- James Popkin, p. 6, Charles Cozic, p. 159.
- Charles Cozic, p. 26.
- Betsy Reed, p. 2.
- Charles Cozic, p. 137.
- Charles Cozic, p. 67.
- Bertha Davis, p. 72.
- Sirgay Sanger, TheCompulsive Gambler: A Bet Guaranteed To Lose, U.S.A. Today Magazine,January (1990), p. 2.
- Stuart Winston, p. 8.
