 Who wasn't in support of more gambling regulations?
This effort has largely succeeded, because Vegas is still the dominant image of American gambling, if not the dominant reality. Today's panelists tell the commission that kids are starting to gamble too young and are getting addicted too easily, that compulsive gambling appears to be increasing as gambling spreads, that gambling marketing may be designed to addict customers, and that the industry exploits problem gamblers by allowing them to draw repeated credit card advances from ATMs on casino floors. The commission won't (and can't) take any grand stand against gambling. Instead it will opt for small, targeted policies, concentrating on compulsive gambling. The commission may recommend that gaming taxes be used to underwrite treatment of pathological gamblers and that insurance companies be encouraged to cover gambling addiction. Similarly, the commission will try to reduce gamblers' access to cash by limiting the size of ATM advances and prodding casinos to remove the machines from their floors. In short, it will treat gambling as a tobaccolike vice. If the comments of the pro-industry commissioners can be believed, the industry will happily endorse such a report. Gamblers don't quite accept the cigarette analogy--though commission member Bill Bible, a former chief of the Nevada Gaming Commission, did concede that gambling was like alcohol--but they're happy to sign on to the specific measures. It has already established a (mostly) independent center to fund research into pathological gambling. It medicalizes the problem of compulsive gambling, blaming it on psychological abnormality rather than industry machination.
 Frank Fahrenkopf
 Kay Coles James  Otis Harris  Frank Fahrenkopf  Tom Grey