“Generally, these are cases of the rich and powerful using their positions to further exploit the poor and vulnerable.”  Those were the words used by Graeme Decarie in E-mail to me to describe the social injustices that are caused by us to third world countries. Those words were my guiding light in preparing the following presentation. After all, is it any less true that we, who are by comparison, the poor and vulnerable are being exploited by the very people that we elected to protect and to represent us? Is it not a fact that gambling was considered illegal and immoral until governments realized how much money could be made by being the provider of the activity? However, there was one thing that they had not foreseen. Not only did the gamblers get addicted to gambling, but also the governments got addicted to the revenues. The problem with addictions is that they all come with consequences. But the addict does not worry about the consequences because the immediate gratification is so great. It is for that very reason that governments, not only in Canada but also in the United States, Great Britain and many other countries are turning to encouraging gambling among their population as a means of raising easy money for government coffers.  In former times gambling, we were told, was illegal and immoral. The police department actually had a morality squad. It was not uncommon for this squad to raid card games in private homes, to arrest bookmakers who took bets on sports events and horse races, and runners who took bets on the daily numbers. Now, we have card games available in casinos, sports betting on Loto-Quebec Mise au Jeux and numbers are being drawn daily and paying half the odds that the underworld used to. The problem now was how to endorse an activity that had for so long been illegal. The answer came from south of the border. In the earliest days when gambling was limited to Nevada, the mob ran Las Vegas. Gambling was sinful and Las Vegas was Sin City. Eventually organized crime was forced out of the casino industry and replaced by multinational corporations.

The industry was now being cleaned up and if gambling was bad then in order to make it good they needed a better image. Through the magic of semantics the “gaming industry” evolved. Now people with high moral standards who would never dream of being gamblers were “gaming”. What a pleasant sounding activity; playing games. And, with a potential of winning money. Billions of dollars each year are taken in by the gambling industry and in the United States money is funneled from the casinos to the American Gaming Association. Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr., is president and CEO of the American Gaming Association (AGA). In his role as the chief executive of the AGA, Fahrenkopf is the national advocate for the commercial casino industry and is responsible for positioning the association to address regulatory, political and educational issues affecting the industry. I will talk more, later on the educational issues. But first let us examine the man behind the seven figure annual salary paid for by the millions of people who are willing victims of the casino industry.

A lawyer by profession, Fahrenkopf gained national prominence during the 1980s when he served as chairman of the Republican Party for six of President Ronald Reagan's eight years in the White House (1983 to 1989). When Fahrenkopf retired in January 1989, he had served as chairman of the Republican National Committee longer than any person in the 20th century (and second longest in the history of the party) and led the party through two successful presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988. It is no wonder that the tremendous amount of political clout lead to the rapid expansion of gambling across the United States to a point where it is now legal in every state except Utah and Hawaii. When the Windsor casino opened its doors who better than a large conglomerate in the form of Caesar’s Entertainment Corp. to operate the casino and teach the Canadian novices how it is done? The fact that the Criminal Code of Canada, which to the present day considers gambling to be illegal unless it is managed, conducted and operated by provincial governments does not seem to bother the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation. Despite being warned by their own legal experts they opted to interpret the law to their own benefit and continue to this day to ignore the Criminal Code of Canada. Since the Minister of Justice did not interfere, Casino Niagara gave the opportunity to operate the casino to Falls Management, another US. private company.

 Nova Scotia casinos in Truro and Halifax were first operated by Sheraton and later sold to Caesars Entertainment. Most recently the Caesars’ group announced their desire to sell the contract for operating the casinos but the Nova Scotia government replied that they were not interested in being in the casino business. The Criminal Code of Canada further states that all profits from gambling must go to public programs, charities or religious organizations and not to private interests. Can it be clearer that the US casino companies can not, according to the law, be involved in our casino industry? Yet, each year millions of dollars is paid to these gambling organizations for their expertise. It is they who have taught our novices how to market the product that is so potentially deadly and to pass it off as entertainment. It is they who taught us how to offer players reward cards in order to get people to play longer and for larger amounts in order to receive privileges from the casino. It is they who taught us how to target the most vulnerable of our population, the seniors. A bus ride for little or no money, a free buffet lunch and maybe even a few gambling vouchers for free play and with any luck the casino will have a new client. And it apparently works, because every casino I have ever visited featured a “sea of grey” around the slots. Many buying a little freedom and escape from boredom or loneliness and willing to contribute some of their life savings for the privilege while others recycle their old age security cheques. Loto-Quebec spent $1 million dollars last year bussing seniors from Quebec City to the casino at Charlevoix. These seniors left $5 million at the casino.  Electronic gaming machines are designed to captivate the senses and by the continuous play, the near wins and the intermittent payouts it has been described as a ride on a Ferris wheel, with the lows being as gratifying as the highs. Casino gambling, as a whole, is a losing venture. The odds of every activity in the casino are so heavily weighted in favour of the house that when luck breaks even the house will always win because of their edge. The casino bank has an endless stream of money and even if gamblers occasionally win, the money they take home is only a temporary loan. In fact the casino needs the victim to win sometime or they might get discouraged. I have met personally two people who had each won close to $200 000 in a poker jackpot. Both men lost the money back within several months of the win. Aside from the casinos, eight of the provinces have video lottery terminals available in bars, restaurants, bowling alleys, billiard parlours and racetracks.

These machines because of their easy access are creating the most harm of any gambling activity available today. As many as 90% of people showing up for treatment are VLT players.

While prevalence studies generally show that 1 to 2% of gamblers are pathological and an additional 1 to 3% are problematic, a study done counting only machine players found 9% were pathological, 21% were problematic and a shocking 42% were at risk. That study was conducted in 2000 and I can almost guarantee that of the at-risk group a great number have joined the other two categories. The machines are highly addictive and addicts have told me that it was easier to quit a cocaine addiction than it is for them to stop playing. It is because of these machines, that suicides are occurring at the rate of one every two weeks in Quebec. If the government is looking for weapons of mass destruction, I have found them. They are called video lottery terminals. When the government discovers a dangerous side effect to any prescription drug, that drug is removed immediately from the pharmacies. When one bottle of Tylenol had been tampered with, the government ordered all Tylenol product to be removed from the shelves until they could guarantee safety. How many must die before these machines are declared potentially addictive. There are presently class-action suits and civil suits against lottery corporations and machine manufacturers in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and Nova Scotia and yet the only political parties that are against the existence of the machines are the parties in opposition. In Atlantic Canada the Liberal leaders are demanding the removal of VLTs from the marketplace while the same party abuses the citizens of Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia. British Columbia, the one province that used to be my shining example of good social responsibility. Before the Liberal Party got elected there were only charity casinos and there were no machines. In the past four years the people of British Columbia have been given the same opportunity for addiction as the rest of Canada. Soon we will start to experience the results of that expansion. As we examine the pattern across the country we see that the same governments that oppose gambling where they sit in opposition, embrace it in their own jurisdictions where they are the ruling party. Earlier when I talked of the American Gaming Association’s addressing of educational issues, I said I would come back to that later. There is such a shortage of funding for universities and yet so much money available through the American Gaming Association that educational studies are tainted.

 Some of our most trusted institutes of higher learning such as Harvard Medical School and Harvard School on Addictions have become so reliant on gambling industry dollars that they are willing to produce studies that show gambling to be less of a problem than we had thought. Laval University in Quebec is no different. Dr. Robert Ladouceur who is regarded as one of the top experts in the world downplays the dangers of gambling addiction while receiving millions of dollars from Loto-Quebec. Researchers are able to come to any conclusion that they are paid to arrive at simply by using methodology beneficial to their cause. At this point in time, I think that gambling is causing the collapse of the value system for our youth who are being subjected to a something for nothing attitude. The message is that you don’t need a university education if you pick the right six numbers in the lottery. The commercials for the 6/49 lottery encourage us to be nice to people if only because that person may be the next lottery winner. The marketplace is being deprived of consumer dollars that can only be spent once and if they are used for gambling they cannot buy goods or services. The people that can least afford to lose are the ones that gamble the most. Welfare cheques and old age security cheques are being recycled as the provincial governments continue to exploit the masses and the federal government installs blinders so that they don’t have to look at the Pandora’s box that they have opened and the monster that they have released.

(An invigorating question and answer period followed)