 How does the gaming industry exploit problem gamblers?
In today's dispatch, we learn how gambling's foes seek to demonize wagering as a pernicious tobaccolike vice. It may finally settle this question: Is gambling Hollywood or tobacco? 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. Instead it will opt for small, targeted policies, concentrating on compulsive gambling. It will probably propose that casinos and state lotteries fund gambling-addiction research and that casinos take much stronger measures to bar problem gamblers from wagering. 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. 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. In exchange for losing a few compulsive gamblers, the casinos will (falsely) appear more concerned with the health of their customers than with profits. A few years ago, gambling was confined to Las Vegas and Atlantic City. What the commission ought to be investigating is whether the gambling industry has become so powerful that it's politically untouchable. But it can't, because the gambling industry has become so powerful that it's politically untouchable. As long as the commission just nibbles around the edges, the casino operators and state lotteries will be happy to indulge it. Talk about quick defeats: The first sign I see outside the MGM Grand ballroom all but declares that the National Gambling Impact Study Commission has already lost. So "gambling" disappeared in Las Vegas, and "gaming" has risen in its place. Video slot machines crammed into convenience stores--perhaps the most pernicious form of legal gambling there is--are called "retail gaming." People who own casinos are not "casino owners," they are "gaming visionaries." Pathological gamblers are "problem gamers"--as if they're having trouble mastering the rules of Monopoly.
 Casinos allow gamblers easy access to cash through ATM machines on casino floors, and credit card cash advances.
 Casinos offer fine dining, shopping, and big-budget attractions to entice gamblers.  Casinos offer complimentary rooms to entice gamblers.  Casinos offer complimentary food and drinks to entice gamblers.  Casinos allow gamblers easy access to cash through ATM machines on casino floors, and credit card cash advances.