Barry M. Horstman, Post staff reporter
Winning is every gambler's goal. But for some, winning big could be
one of the worst things that could happen in a casino.
A sizable win at the slots or table games - particularly if it comes
during a first or a very early visit to a casino - could, over time, be
the bait that lures him back again and again.
If he is lucky, he will simply lose back what he won, and then some.
But for many, it will be the first step toward the dark side of the
gambling industry, one that lies just beneath its glitzy,
good-times-all-the-time veneer: compulsive gambling.
''The hidden story in the casino industry is addiction,'' said David
Zanotti, a leader of the anti-gambling forces that turned back a
statewide ballot measure last November calling for eight riverboat
casinos in Ohio.
Experts estimate between 1 percent and 5 percent of adults are
vulnerable to compulsive gambling - figures that the gambling industry
questions, saying further research is needed.
But leaders on both sides share concerns that the rapid spread of
riverboat casinos, video poker machines and so-called ''fast'' video
lottery terminals across the nation could worsen what some call ''the
addiction of the '90s.''
Until casinos opened in South Dakota in 1989 and Iowa inaugurated
riverboat gambling two years later, the scope of compulsive gambling was
limited by the fact that one had to travel to either Nevada or Atlantic
City to find a casino.
Now, however, 27 states have some form of casino gambling; by next
year, Greater Cincinnatians, who already have two riverboats on their
doorstep in southeastern Indiana, will be within about a five-hour drive
of nearly a dozen casinos throughout the Midwest.
Easier access to casinos, officials say, means that compulsive
gambling is more likely to surface in people susceptible to a disorder
similar to alcoholism, drug abuse, compulsive shopping and kleptomania.
''If you put a guy who wouldn't cheat on his wife in a room with a
gorgeous nude woman, some guys would fall by the wayside,'' says Arnie
Wexler, executive director of New Jersey's Council on Compulsive
Gambling.
To Wexler and other researchers, the equation is simple: More casinos
mean more people will gamble - a habit that, for a certain percentage,
inevitably will become pathological.
Casino leaders complain that their industry has been unfairly
compared to the tobacco business by critics who accuse them of marketing
an addictive and potentially deadly product.
Frank Fahrenkopf Jr., president of the American Gaming Assn., the
industry's chief lobbying organization, stresses that the
''heartbreaking stories from people who have gambled away their life
savings and more'' represent only a very small portion of the 176
million visits to U.S. casinos last year.
''Just because steak knives are used for murder ... doesn't mean the
rest of us should have to use butter knives to cut steak,'' said Albert
Angel, a lawyer who co-founded the Interactive Gaming Council, a group
examining options for Internet gambling.
Compulsive gamblers, researchers say, follow a progression comparable
to that seen with other addictions. A potentially problem gambler who
starts buying weekly lottery tickets, they say, may move on to ''fast''
keno games - essentially a lottery played about every five minutes - and
then finally shift to the even faster pace of casinos. All the while,
his bets - and, usually, his losses - become more frequent and bigger.
''It's like a drug,'' said gambling opponent Bob Maginnis, head of
the Family Research Council, a conservative Washington-based group.
''You don't start out taking heroin. You start with marijuana and
progress up.''
However, gambling industry executives, while not denying that problem
gambling exists, argue that most research to date has stemmed more from
theory than detached analysis of data.
''We're frankly tired of all the anecdotal material out there,'' said
AGA executive director Judy Patterson. ''The truth is, no one knows for
certain how many problem gamblers there are. Our position is one is too
many... But we'd rather know what the real numbers are and live with
that.''
Toward that end, the industry last year established the National
Center for Responsible Gaming to examine the causes and treatment of
problem gambling. The center's first major report, expected later this
year, will be an analysis by the Harvard Medical School's Division of
Addic tions of more than 100 previous studies on gambling addiction.
''Our knowledge about compulsive gambling today is where we were with
AIDS 10 years ago,'' said Valerie Lorenz, who for the past decade has
headed the Compulsive Gambling Center in Baltimore.
High-profile victims such as former Cincinnati Reds player Pete Rose
and former Ohio State quarterback Art Schlichter, she said, have helped
to focus attention on a problem exacerbated by gambling's image changing
from ''something sinful to something acceptable.''
According to the National Council on Problem Gambling, women have
become the fastest growing group of compulsive gamblers in the nation.
While men represented about two-thirds of problem gamblers in the past,
women now account for more than half the caseloads of counselors in
states with casino gambling.
For the women, the heavy gambling often is a substitute for an
unhappy marriage or something else missing in their lives, researchers
say. Men who become pathological gamblers, meanwhile, tend to be competi
tive and narcissistic enough to believe that they can consistently beat
the casinos' statistical edge.
Like some other gambling critics, Zanotti, head of the
Cleveland-based Ohio Round Table, believes that the industry already has
carefully examined the subject of compulsive gambling. Its goal, he
charges, is not to alleviate the problem, but rather to determine the
precise ''percentage of addictive gamblers needed to get the most
profit.''
Bernard Horn, political direc tor of the National Coalition Against
Legalized Gambling, es timates that up to 50 percent of casinos' profits
come from the 1 percent to 5 percent of custom ers who are compulsive
gam blers. Others put the estimate even higher.
Gambling critics predict that internal casino documents on that
subject will surface one day, just as recently released tobacco industry
records confirmed that cigarette manufacturers - de spite decades of
denials - long knew about nicotine's addictive powers. However, no one
has yet been able to prove that such ''smoking guns'' exist in the
gambling industry.
''This is great conspiracy the ory,'' said Gary Burhop, vice
president for corporate relations of Harrah's Entertainment Inc. ''A
compulsive gambler might be a good customer - one time. That's not the
kind of customer Harrah's is interested in hav ing.''
No compulsive gambler, how ever, loses everything in one trip to the
casino. Instead, his finan cial hole typically becomes in creasingly
deeper during repeat ed trips to casinos, as he gradu ally empties bank
accounts, bor rows the maximum amounts on credit cards and, often,
begins stealing from family or work place to cover mounting debt.
''It used to take about five years to hit bottom,'' Ms. Lorenz said.
''Now it's down to about two years.''
Nearly one quarter of compul sive gamblers, she added, even tually
end up in the criminal jus tice system. In addition, compul sive
gamblers can cost their communities from $13,000 to as much as $40,000 a
year - ex penses that chip away at whatev er tax revenues cities and
states derive from local casinos.
As proof of their sincere mo tives, casinos note that they al ready
spend about $5 million an nually on programs aimed at combating
compulsive gambling. Brochures saying, ''Know when to stop before you
start,'' are available in casinos, and dealers and other employees
provide toll-free hotlines for Gamblers Anonymous or other groups to
anyone who asks for help.
But in searching for longtime answers to the problem of com pulsive
gambling, casinos argue that they should not be held to standards higher
than those ex pected of other businesses.
When someone spends $2,000 on clothing in a mall, for in stance, no
one asks whether he can afford it or accuses him of being a compulsive
shopper, they note. So it is both unrealis tic and unfair, they contend,
to expect casinos to be more intru sive in regard to their custom ers'
financial backgrounds.
''If a grandmother walks in and spends $1,000, how do you know if
that's the last $1,000 she has in the bank?'' Ms. Patterson said. ''You
don't, and that's the real problem.''
