Legal gambling operations make $13 billion a year from California's booming
gaming industry but do little to aid the hundreds of thousands whose lives
it ruins or ease damage to society, lawmakers said Tuesday. A Senate
committee, which intends to swiftly tackle the problem, was surprised at
some findings during a nearly four-hour informational hearing: A government
Web site for the state's estimated 1.5 million problem gamblers included a
link to a private firm that offers gaming. Officials promised to comply with
lawmakers' request to remove the link. Some $3 million donated by Indian
casinos years ago to address problem gambling was given back when it went
unused by the state. Much of the state's efforts center around a hotline
number – 1-800-GAMBLER – that does not necessarily lead to true help.
Experts said there are only 15 counselors in the state who are certified to
deal with pathological gambling. Lawmakers said that in general they found
an underfunded, inadequate effort by the state, which has set up the tiny
state Office of Problem Gambling and four other small gambling-related
agencies. Steve Hedrick, director of the Office of Problem Gambling, said
his agency released an 18-page statewide plan this month but said he was
uncertain what it would cost to implement it. "We're preparing for the day
when we have the money," Hedrick told the Senate Governmental Organization
Committee, which oversees gambling.
Sen. Dean Florez, a Fresno-area Democrat who chairs the committee, demanded
Hedrick report back to the committee as the Legislature's dominant Democrats
prepare to consider Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed 2007-08
budget. The gambling plan, which cost up to $150 million annually, would
primarily center on public awareness, prevention services and building a
better treatment infrastructure for the disease of pathological gambling.
Pilot programs would likely be centered in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. The
state is currently spending about $3 million on the problem. As one of the
committee's first emergency steps, Florez said they hope to hasten state
plans for pathological gamblers to place themselves on lists barring them
from entering card rooms and other gambling establishments, for instance. A
parade of state officials, regulators, and experts testifying before the
committee, described a grim impact of Indian casinos, card rooms, the
state-run lottery, horse racing and illegal gambling on the Internet and
elsewhere. Problem gamblers' fates range from killing themselves to
committing crimes.
Bruce Roberts, of the nonprofit California Council on Problem Gambling, said
about a third of California's overcrowded prisons house inmates whose
downfall involved gambling in some way.
"You can't gamble your society to prosperity," said Fred Jones of the
California Coalition Against Gambling Expansion.
Tim Fong of the Gambling Studies Program at the University of California,
Los Angeles, said ethnic minorities and the poor gamble in disproportionate
numbers.
Efforts to help them are dwarfed by programs run by much smaller states such
as Iowa, experts said.
Anthony Miranda, of the California Nations Indian Gaming Association,
described casinos' efforts as generous and aggressive. But he acknowledged
that newer compacts, still lucrative for cash-strapped state coffers, no
longer include automatic allocations for gambling-problem programs.
Officials from the $3 billion-plus a year state-run lottery described their
problem-gambling program, which includes a hot-line number, but acknowledged
that only $100,000 is allocated to the effort annually.
Florez questioned whether some of the lottery games themes are aimed at
certain groups such as youths.
