The Hawaii Gaming Advocates, Inc. promotes gambling in Hawaii.  Its September, 1999 report describes a resolution asking the Hawaii legislature "to consider legislation to tax and regulate recreational gaming as a means to help revitalize the economy."  That resolution was approved by the Waikiki Neighborhood Board at its August meeting.  The Advocates' executive chairman stated that the resolution "will be circulated among other neighborhood boards before the 2000 legislative session."

The Waikiki board was offered another resolution in October asking the legislature to legalize parimutuel gambling on horse-racing.  A related resolution asked the legislature to condemn the Ala Wai golf course for "use as a thoroughbred horse racing venue."  Factual data provided by members of the Hawai'i Coalition Against Legalized Gambling played a major role in the area residents' vote defeating the board's motions.

Four days later, legalized gambling was the subject of a top-of-the-page headline in a newspaper business section.   According to a "Casino King," "Gambling might help tourism."  That was the view of the owner of a very new and very big Las Vegas casino.  Even stronger was his contention that, "If the tourism industry wants to be competitive with other destinations, they have to bring in gambling."

Indeed, commercial and state gambling proposals often have been discussed by Hawaii legislators, about 250 bills in the past 20 years.  Much of the 1996 session of the state legislature involved the issue of gambling.  The central question was whether some form of gambling could prove beneficial for Hawaii.  Belief that the economy was stagnating or in recession gave impetus to the discussions.

Despite opinion polls showing only 32% in favor and 58% opposed to legalized gambling, the 1996 House of Representatives debated the merits of a state lottery.  The Senate actually passed a bill to permit shipboard gambling.  A public referendum on gambling received much attention.  By the end of the session, however, no decision had been taken.

During that session, gambling received much attention in the media.   In the Focus section of the Honolulu Advertiser on February 11, 1996, a former editor examined the many negatives resulting from gambling in other areas. A very favorable view was offered in a report by a former Honolulu resident working as a black-jack dealer near Reno, Nevada.

Although legal and illegal gambling are hardly new in the United States, legalized gambling has been spreading widely since the 1980s.  In 1986 only Nevada and New Jersey had casinos. while about half of the states now have them.  State lotteries, bingo houses, and parimutuel betting also have increased greatly in numbers.

The rapid spread of state lotteries and casinos throughout the nation has stimulated numerous studies of the effects of gambling.  Libraries have long possessed numerous books containing advice for gambling.  Now, they are beginning to have books about its socially damaging consequences. Less evident are numerous research investigations conducted by skilled professionals.  Only a small segment of such data can be presented here.

Beginning in 1984, the Journal of Gambling Studies has been publishing articles by psychologists, sociologists, historians, psychiatrists and other knowledgeable personnel.  An entire issue of the 1998 Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science is devoted to reports about gambling.   Especially important is the June, 1999 National Gambling Impact Study Commission Final Report (NGISC).

A June, 1999 report in The Economist revealed that in 1997 Americans spent more on gambling than their combined spending on movie tickets, spectator sports, recorded music, video games, and theme parks.  In recent years, gambling has been described as the fastest growing industry in the United States.  Ten states have commercial casinos, and 22 have casinos operated by American Indian tribes.  Lotteries are available in 37 states.  Still, 1999 has seen Alabama voters reject a lottery referendum while state Supreme Courts have overturned gambling laws in California and South Carolina.

Since Hawaii is only one of two states which have not legalized some form of gambling, it will continue to be a target for gambling entrepreneurs. To some legislators and tourist businesses, gambling may seem like a possible solution to a stagnant economy.   Potentially large profits could accrue to those who gain a gambling foothold in this virgin territory.

The most profitable of the gambling enterprises obviously are those with the greatest odds against winning.  In a 1997 book subtitled:  How Gambling ruins the economy and destroys lives," Jennifer Vogel contends that the lottery has the worst pay-out--only about 65%.  She estimates that slot machines pay about 92% while blackjack pays about 98%.  Others have reported payouts in some locales as low as 40%.

Timothy O'Brien's 1998 book Bad Bet contended that "...86 percent of the $586.5 billion wagered in 1996 was wagered in casinos, and about 50% of the $47.6 billion lost by gamblers that year was lost in casinos."  A key question is:  "Who will be the losers?"

Most gamblers will be losers.  The infrequent big winners are publicized widely while the vast number of losers remain anonymous.  Virtually ignored are the millions of Americans who become hooked on gambling.  Those persons who cannot quit gambling have been called compulsive, addicted, or pathological gamblers.

According to a study conducted at the Harvard Medical School, addicted gamblers in the United States increased from 1.1 million to 4.4 million between 1976 to 1997.  In the three-year period 1994 and 1997, the number doubled from 2.2 to 4.4 million.  This was a period of enormous increase in gambling facilities.

Addicted gamblers have the most serious troubles:  theft, arrests, loss of jobs, bankruptcy, marital conflict, and suicide.  Some of these troubles are faced by problem gamblers who are far more numerous than addicted gamblers.  The Harvard study reported that the number of problem gamblers rose from 4.9 million in 1976 to 11 million in 1997.  Altogether, addicted and problem gamblers rose to over 15 million in 1997.

Between 1991 and 1997, military personnel who have become addicted  to gambling increased by 66%.  The military increase of problem gamblers rose even more, by 108%--from 108,000 to 212,250.  That is a much higher proportion among the military than among the civilian population.

The Iowa Department of Human Services has reported an enormous rise in adolescent gambling addiction since the state's legalization of casinos. The Iowa claim also has been that adolescence is a period of great vulnerability to this compulsion.  A California medical school professor has reported that teens are three times more likely to become pathological gamblers than are adults.

Despite a Massachusetts state law prohibiting the purchase of lottery tickets by those under age 18, a state survey found that 47% of seventh grade children had previously bought lottery tickets.  In Atlantic City, 64% of the students of a high school had gambled at local casinos.

A 1995 series on gambling in Newsday reported that: "Lower-income communities spend a larger share of their money on lotteries."  Their data showed that "Annual lottery spending per $10,000 of household income was eight times higher in the lowest income areas than in the highest."  That poor people are drawn to gambling has been widely documented.

The 15 million addicted and problem gamblers in the United States include the most vulnerable persons. Along with teenagers and the poor, part-time workers, the elderly, the handicapped, and other troubled individuals are most susceptible to the illusions of gambling.  Habitual gambling usually makes their lot in life even more precarious.

Each of those millions is a human tragedy:  the schoolteacher-gambler who committed suicide;  the widow who lost her savings and her home;  the 39-year-old man whose credit-card debt drove him into bankruptcy; children left in cars all night while parents gambled;  the cafe owner whose business near a new casino failed;  the 79% of compulsive gamblers who reported that they wish to die;  and so many of the others.

According to O'Brien's Bad Bet, "in most markets the bulk of gambling revenue, as much as 80 percent, comes from a small percentage of gamblers, about 20 percent."  Many of them are compulsive or problem gamblers. O'Brien also notes that, like the tobacco industry, the gambling industry was denying or ignoring the habituating nature of their business.

The rapid spread of lotteries, casinos, slot machines, and other gambling attractions spreads the damage done to habitual gamblers outward to their families and beyond.  Some of the gambling damage to families is reported in a brochure distributed by the Hawaii Family Forum.  These included: Harrison County, Miss. has averaged 500 more divorces per year since casinos arrived;  Central City, Colorado experienced a six-fold rise in child protection cases the year after casinos arrived;  an Illinois study of compulsive gamblers reported 26% were divorced or separated as a result of their gambling.

An obvious consequence of gambling losses is shown in a NGISC report which revealed the rapid increase in the their financial troubles.  While 2-3% percent of those who sought credit counseling in the 1980s blamed gambling for their troubles, little more than a decade later, about 15% made that explanation.

Like other problems of personal debt, bankruptcy affects communities as well as gamblers.  Two of the best-known gambling communities have far higher bankruptcy rates than the national average.  Nevada's rate is 50% higher and Atlantic City's rate is 70% higher than the national average. Communities within 100 miles of gambling sites have bankruptcy rates 35% to 70% higher than the national average.

According to Harvard Medical School data, legalized gambling is linked to crime convictions.  For the United States, such convictions increased by 150,000 between 1994 and 1997.  Approximately half of the new convicts were pathological or problem gamblers. According to the NGISC, "about 23 percent of pathological gamblers have been imprisoned, and so had 13 percent of the problem gamblers."

An economist of the University of Illinois reported that U.S. counties with casinos averaged an 8 percent higher crime rate than counties without casinos.  Among the higher rates of major crimes reported in the casino-linked counties were robbery, burglary, larceny, rape, and assault.

Owners of small business are among the losers to legalized gambling.  As more residents spend their time and lose their money on gambling, they have less to spend on food, clothing, housing, medical care, and other necessities for themselves, their spouses, and their children.

Lotteries are said to be the most habitual type of gambling.  Lottery tickets are widely available and many ticket buyers don't feel that they are gambling.  While buying groceries or gasoline, many buyers spend regular amounts for lottery tickets each time.  State lotteries have described losses as a substitute for paying taxes.

Those who claim that lottery tax revenues would go to improve state schools need to look at the facts.  A report in the May, 1996  Money magazine has the facts: "The proportion of state spending dedicated to education has remained relatively unchanged in the '90s--about 50% for lottery states and 60% for nonlottery states--despite the growth in lottery revenues."  Not a good bet for school children.

Will legalized gambling lower taxes?  Don't bet on that either.  The same article reported that:  "although states with lotteries have raked in more than $128 billion in ticket purchases over the past five years, average per capita taxes in those states have increased 21.7%.  That tax growth rate is three times as high as in nonlottery states, where annual per capita taxes have risen just 7.2% since 1990."

Las Vegas usually is deemed to be the number one gambling place in the United States.  According to a documented report by the Hawaii Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, Las Vegas is also number one nationally in suicides, women killed by men, gambling addictions, divorce, and high school dropouts.  It is number three in bankruptcies and abortions;  number four in rapes, out-of-wedlock births, and alcohol related deaths; number five in crimes; number 6 in locked-up prisoners: number fifty in voter participation.  Should Las Vegas be a role model for Hawaii?

Nor should Minnesota which, in less than ten years of legalized gambling, "created a broad new class of addicts, victims, and criminals whose activities are devastating families and costing taxpayers and businesses millions of dollars."  That quotation was made by the Honolulu Advertiser in March, 1997 from a report in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

In the spring 1995 issue of Illinois Business Review, a University of Illinois economist wrote:  "Because casinos have artificially high profit margins, are often owned by out-of-area investors, and frequently take dollars from the area's existing tourist base rather than attracting new tourists, the effect of gambling in many cases is to diminish the economic base and cost jobs."

Legalizing gambling will not solve the economic or other troubles of Hawaii.  It would be a major problem--indeed, an interwoven variety of serious problems.  The opposition of the Honolulu police department is based on their awareness of the relationship of legal gambling to crime rates.  Churches and social agencies know that legalization of gambling would increase the problems of individuals, families, and the community.

Their knowledge of the social costs of legalized gambling can prevent it from happening in Hawaii--but only if residents keep tabs on legislators. As one commission member of the NGISC concluded:  "The gambling industry pours vast sums into the campaign coffers of gambling-friendly politicians."  That's an obvious voter-alert warning. 

Copyright December 9,1999 by Jerome G. Manis