Saturday, November 25, 2006

EVERYBODY KNOWS we have a problem-gambling problem. And everybody's got a
different take on how to address it. As solutions go, mine is quite radical.
First, bring all the parking meters in from the cold - to replace all the
VLTs that have taken up residence indoors in our province, from taverns to
pool halls and casinos. Hey, people could still park their butts in front of
them and feed money into the machines. Their odds of winning wouldn't even
change much. But as a pastime, feeding the meters - especially if there are
no bells and whistles attached - would be deadly. Which is exactly what the
doctor ordered, right? Second, put one-armed bandits out on the sidewalk
where the parking meters used to be. That way, lucky motorists could win the
jackpot when they put any amount of change in. I'm willing to bet most would
rather take their chances on the meter than on the commissionaire coming by
with pen and pad in hand. City coffers would be bulging and the
parking-ticket bureaucracy would quickly become obsolete. Of course, I'm
half-joking. Which half I'm joking about, I'm not really sure.
Thankfully, there are serious people doing serious research on societal
attitudes towards gambling and making serious recommendations (unlike me).
One such person is Christiane Poulin, an addictions expert at Dalhousie
medical school, who makes an interesting argument in the current issue of
the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Her view, in a nutshell, is that
we should learn from our successes in the cigarette wars and apply those
lessons to gambling. She advocates limiting the number of lotteries you can
play, driving up the price of lottery tickets through taxation and forcing
retailers to keep tickets behind the counter. Go with plain packaging and
addiction warning labels. Further cull the VLT herd, she says, and ban new
casinos and gambling advertising altogether. Come to think of it, her answer
sounds almost as radical as mine. But there is good reason to contemplate a
crackdown. Gambling in all its forms is growing by leaps and bounds and
there is mounting evidence that kids are getting hooked younger and harder.
Betting on sports is the "gateway" drug here. Don't take it from me. McGill
University in Montreal actually has an International Centre for Youth
Gambling Problems and High Risk Behaviours. Recently, it even set up a
website which provides teens with a forum to anonymously discuss their
gambling problems with counsellors.

An estimated 70 per cent of kids under 18 have reported participating in
some kind of gambling activity over the previous 12 months. "We found that
four to six per cent are actually experiencing severe gambling problems,
what you would call an adult pathological gambler," McGill researcher Alissa
Sklar said in a recent interview with the Canadian Press.

"These rates are roughly three times the rate for gambling disorders in the
adult population."

You may counter that it's unfair to spoil the fun of the many to stop the
foolishness of the few. Fair enough. It does seem stupid to overreact to
what remains a statistically small problem, no matter how you slice it.
(Alcohol abuse, for example, has a far more pervasive and devastating social
impact. As such, it's harder to tackle head-on. Yet that should not preclude
us from doing something about lesser plagues, and the truth is gambling
addiction is burning a hole through pockets, families and communities.)

At issue is not so much the legalization of gambling, but its normalization
over the past decade. As a society, we have gone from tolerating it, which
is the most we should do, to promoting it, which is the worst we can do.
Some people argue it's a benign social activity, if not a beneficial one.
But that's short-sighted.

"In theory, government gambling revenues benefit all of society. In reality,
since gambling revenues go into general revenue pots, individuals who do not
participate in gambling activities end up being the biggest winners because
they benefit without having invested anything," Ms. Poulin writes.
"Furthermore, a disproportionate number of individuals who participate in
certain gambling activities (e.g., video lottery terminals [VLTs]) are from
disadvantaged groups in our society.

"Decisions and policy pertaining to gambling need to be based on a full
accounting of the health, economic and social benefits and costs of
gambling, rather than on only the short-term benefits of employment and tax
revenue."

I especially agree with Ms. Poulin's proposed ban on gambling advertising,
for the simple reason that the industry gets far more than its fair share of
free publicity as it is. Have you ever come home after work, turned on the
sports channel and wondered, "When exactly did poker become a sport?"

But that's not when I had my personal epiphany. I realized the gambling
ethic had become a tad too mainstream while watching Deal or No Deal. That
game show is in a league of its own. Gone is the pretence of rewarding
contestants for their qualities, intellectual or otherwise. The only true
qualification you need on Deal or No Deal is a healthy risk-taking gene. And
it's awfully easy to forget that it's the network's money that contestants
are playing with, not their own.

Deal or No Deal is actually a luridly fascinating look at the insidiousness
of gambling. If somebody off the street handed you $5,000 just like that,
you'd be ecstatic. Every contestant could at least walk away with that much
on Howie Mandel's program. Just making it on to the show is the equivalent
of winning the lottery. But it isn't very long before these "winners" are
turning down $165,000 offers as if it were parking-meter change. Of course,
if they didn't, it would be a very dull spectacle, indeed.

Don't get me wrong. I don't believe in prohibition or censorship. But I do
believe the pendulum of social attitudes has swung too far towards
permissiveness when it comes to gambling. It's time to bring it back.