[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 47 (Monday, April 15, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3323-S3324]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      GAMBLING'S TOLL IN MINNESOTA

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, the Reader's Digest recently 
condensed an article from the Minneapolis Star Tribune written by Chris 
Ison and Dennis McGrath that talks about the pull of legalized gambling 
in the State of Minnesota, which I ask to be printed in the Record 
after my remarks.
  For those who are unaware of the problems that we face, please read 
this article.
  It illustrates why we need a national commission to take a look at 
where we are going in this Nation on legalized gambling. The article 
follows:

                  [From the Minneapolis Star Tribune]

                      Gambling's Toll in Minnesota

                 (By Chris Ison and Dennis J. McGrath)

       [America is becoming a nation of gamblers. Once confined to 
     Atlantic City, Las Vegas and Reno, gambling is now legal in 
     48 states--all but Hawaii and Utah--and casinos run full tilt 
     in 24. Almost 100 million Americans bet $400 billion last 
     year and lost $39 billion to the house.
       To win legal status, the industry promised some tax-poor 
     states a river of money for public programs. But along with 
     the wealth came an alarming rise in suicides, bankruptcies 
     and crime. Here is the experience of one state, where the 
     first full-service casino was welcomed in 1988].
       Hour after hour, the blackjack cards flipped past, and 
     still she played. Friday afternoon blurred into Saturday. 
     Through the ringing of slot machines and chattering of coins 
     dropping into tin trays, Catherine Avina heard her name 
     paged.
       ``Are you coming home tonight?'' It was her 21-year-old 
     son, Joaquin, on the phone. ``Probably not,'' she answered.
       Avina didn't go to Mystic Lake Casino in Prior Lake, Minn., 
     as much as she escaped to it. That weekend in May 1994, the 
     depressed 49-year-old mother of three was escaping the worst 
     news yet--she was in danger of being fired after almost 11 
     years as an assistant state attorney general. On Monday--her 
     fourth straight day at the casino--she dragged herself back 
     to her St. Paul home, broke and more depressed than ever.
       Two days later, Joaquin confronted his mother about her 
     gambling, and they argued. The next morning, when she didn't 
     come out of her bedroom, he peeked in. Two empty bottles of 
     anti-depressants and a suicide note were near her body. Later 
     the family found debts of more than $7,000, and Avina was 
     still making payments for gambling-addiction therapy received 
     a year earlier.
       In less than a decade legalized gambling in Minnesota--$4.1 
     billion is legally wagered in the state each year--has 
     created a new class of addicts, victims and criminals whose 
     activities are devastating families. Even conservative 
     estimates of the social toll suggest that problem gambling 
     costs Minnesotans more than $200 million per year in taxes, 
     lost income, bad debts and crime.
       Ten years ago only one Gamblers Anonymous group was meeting 
     in the state; today there are 53 groups. According to 
     research by the Center for Addiction Studies at the 
     University of Minnesota in Duluth, nearly 38,000 Minnesota 
     adults are probably pathological gamblers. A 1994 Star 
     Tribune/WCCO-TV poll found that 128,000 adults in Minnesota--
     four percent--showed signs associated with problem gambling 
     and gambling addiction.

[[Page S3324]]

       Many experts agree that the potential for gambling 
     addiction among the young--the most vulnerable group--is 
     worse. Teens are twice as likely as adults to become 
     addicted.
       Jeff Copeland, a 21-year-old from suburban Minneapolis, 
     can't go to college because he's accumulated a $20,000 
     gambling debt. ``It ruins your life,'' he says. ``And people 
     don't really understand. I thought about suicide. It's the 
     easiest way to get out of it.''
       Pawnshop Boom: Thousands of Minnesotans are burying 
     themselves in debt because of gambling, borrowing millions 
     they'll never be able to pay back. Bankruptcy experts 
     estimate that more than 1,000 people a year are filing for 
     bankruptcy protection (average owed: $40,000), at an 
     estimated cost to creditors of more than $2.5 million. 
     ``Compared with ten years ago, there are 20 times as many 
     people who have gambling debts,'' says bankruptcy attorney 
     Jack Prescott of Minneapolis.
       One of these is Hennepin County Commissioner Sandra Hilary 
     of Minneapolis. She filed for bankruptcy two days after 
     admitting she was addicted to slot machines. She estimated 
     she'd lost nearly $100,000 gambling. After counseling, Hilary 
     is now trying to reimburse her creditors.
       Throughout the state, at least 17 new pawnshops have sprung 
     up near casinos, with gamblers hocking possessions for far 
     less than real value to support their gambling habits. In 
     or near Cass Lake (pop. 923), four miles from Palace Bingo 
     & Casino, there are four pawnshops. That's a pawnshop for 
     every 231 people.
       Police near casinos note an increase in bogus reports of 
     thefts. These come from people who lie about the 
     disappearance of a ring, video camera or other expensive item 
     that they actually pawned to pay for their gambling.
       Easy Credit: Minnesotans are also burning up welfare 
     payments at casinos. Hundreds of thousands of taxpayer 
     dollars that are meant to provide food, clothes and housing 
     for the poor are being wagered on blackjack and in slot 
     machines, and for residents of two Minnesota counties, the 
     money is being made available from automated teller machines 
     inside almost every casino in the state. During a typical 
     month last year, welfare recipients from Hennepin and Ramsey 
     counties withdrew $39,000 in benefits from casino ATMs.
       There are few incentives for casinos to regulate the 
     availability of credit to gamblers. The casinos can't lose: 
     they don't give the credit; they simply make the money.
       Credit-card companies--there are now more than 7000--have 
     made strong profits in recent years despite increasing 
     bankruptcy and delinquent payments nationwide. Interest rates 
     are so high--averaging 18 percent--they still make up for 
     losses from bankruptcy. And the issuers pass much of the loss 
     onto consumers through higher rates, fees and penalties, says 
     Ruth Susswein, executive director of Bankcard Holders of 
     America, a nonprofit consumer-education group.
       ``They're making so much money it's been worth it to them 
     to keep offering credit,'' Susswein adds. Some casinos also 
     rent space to companies that cash checks and provide credit-
     card advances for fees.
       Police Burden: It seemed to take only minutes for Carol 
     Foley to get hooked on video gambling machines. ``Within two 
     or three days,'' she says, ``I was playing every day.'' To 
     cover her losses, Foley, 43, forged $175,000 in checks at her 
     job at the E. M. Lohmann Co., a church-goods dealer in St. 
     Paul. Last September she was released from a correction 
     center in Roseville, Minn., after serving eight months for 
     forgery. She underwent counseling for her gambling addiction 
     and is on a monthly payment plan with her former employer.
       The high crime rate among problem gamblers has been well 
     established. The National Council on Problem Gambling found 
     that 75 percent of gamblers treated at in-patient centers had 
     committed a crime.
       Between 1988--when the first of Minnesota's 17 casinos 
     began operating--and 1994, counties with casinos saw the 
     crime rate rise twice as fast as those without casinos. The 
     increase was the greatest for crimes linked to gambling, such 
     as fraud, theft and forgery/counterfeiting.
       Casinos are burdening local police. When Grand Casino Mille 
     Lacs opened on the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation in April 
     1991, county police responded to almost twice as many 
     incidents of crime or people seeking help on the reservation.
       Jean Mott, a 38-year-old mother of three, worked nights at 
     a Kmart distribution center to help pay the family bills. But 
     the bills began backing up when Mott headed to Mystic Lake 
     Casino, rather than her Shakopee home, at the end of her 
     shift.
       Just before dawn one day in January 1995, having lost 
     another paycheck to the casino, Mott drove to the Brooks' 
     Food Market in Shakopee. Wearing a ski mask and with her hand 
     in her pocket to simulate a gun, she stole $233. Police 
     easily traced the holdup to Mott because a patrol officer had 
     run a registration check after he saw her car parked with its 
     lights on just south of the store that morning. Mott was 
     convicted of simple robbery, and served 30 days in jail and 
     30 days on electronic home monitoring.
       Taxpayer Tab: The list of violent gambling-related crimes 
     is also growing. Redwood Falls police officer Derek Woodford 
     was shot by a gambler from Gary, Ind., who had broken into a 
     local bank after a day of gambling at Jackpot Junction in 
     Morton. Woodford spent 13 days in the hospital recovering 
     from three bullet wounds.
       Gambling has long been recognized, as well, as a root cause 
     of embezzlement. In most gambling-related embezzlement cases, 
     authorities say, the court file shows the same thing: no 
     previous criminal record.
       ``Prior to 1990, we had zero cases of gambling-related 
     embezzlements,'' says William Urban, president of Loss 
     Prevention Specialists, Inc., a Minneapolis company that 
     helps employers deal with internal thefts. Since then the 
     company has investigated gambling-related losses of ``well 
     over $500,000.''
       Reva Wilkinson, of Cedar, is now in federal prison for 
     embezzling more than $400,000 from the Guthrie Theater to 
     support her gambling habit. Besides the money she stole from 
     her Minneapolis employer, her case cost taxpayers over 
     $100,000 to investigate, prosecute and adjudicate.
       In June 1993 Theresa Erdmann was charged with stealing 
     nearly $120,000 from the checking account and weekly 
     offerings at St. Michael's Catholic Church in Madison. She 
     said the money was blown on gambling, and now she's serving a 
     three-year sentence in a state prison.
       Hidden Suicides: More and more, some problem gamblers pay 
     the ultimate price. The Star Tribune confirmed six gambling-
     related suicides in Minnesota--five in the past three years. 
     Almost certainly, this is only a fraction of the total.
       The victims are people like 19-year-old John Lee, a St. 
     Paul college student who, in a three-month period, won about 
     $30,000 at blackjack. Then he started losing. Down to his 
     last $10,000, he lost it all one night. He returned home, put 
     a shotgun to his head and killed himself. In addition, at 
     least 122 Minnesota gamblers have attempted suicide, 
     according to directors of the six state-funded gambling-
     treatment centers.
       Other deaths that may be related to depression over 
     gambling losses are not listed as suicides at all. ``So 
     often, when people talk about suicide, they say, `I'd just 
     drive off the road. I'd drive into a tree,' '' says Sandi 
     Brustuen of the Vanguard Compulsive Gambling Treatment 
     Program in Granite Falls, Minn. ``They don't want anyone to 
     know they committed suicide, and they want their families to 
     collect the insurance.''
       The suicide rate among pathological gamblers nationally is 
     believed to rival that of drug addicts. Ten to 20 percent of 
     pathological gamblers have attempted suicide, and almost 90 
     percent have contemplated it.
       Treatment experts, researchers and gamblers themselves say 
     states can do more to reduce the negative consequences for 
     gamblers. Here are some of the most frequently mentioned 
     ideas:
       Underwrite better research: Many research efforts across 
     the country have been criticized for failing to prove that 
     treatment works, for failing to measure the social costs of 
     gambling and for failing to implement a long-range plan to 
     address problem-gambling issues. ``We really don't know 
     exactly how much problem gamblers cost society,'' says Henry 
     Lesieur, editor of the Journal of Gambling Studies and a 
     criminal-justice professor at Illinois State University in 
     Normal.
       On the federal level, the issue of gambling addiction only 
     recently started to generate action. Last fall committees in 
     the House and Senate held hearings on bills that would 
     authorize a national commission to study the economic and 
     social effects of legalized gambling.
       Emphasize public awareness and education--especially among 
     young people--about the risks of gambling: Some suggest 
     funding more in-school efforts, perhaps in conjunction with 
     math and science classes or anti-drug programs. ``Let people 
     know what the odds are. The longer you gamble, the more 
     you're going to lose,'' says Alan Gilbert, solicitor general 
     of Minnesota.
       Train casino employees to spot--and discourage--problem 
     gamblers from betting irresponsibly: Some casinos already do 
     this. But they offer only anecdotal evidence that such 
     efforts are used, and some say they've never barred a person 
     for problem gambling unless the person asked to be barred.
       Gambling has significant social and economic impact. It 
     results in ruined lives, families and businesses; in 
     bankruptcies and bad loans; in suicides, embezzlements and 
     other crimes committed to feed or cover up gambling habits--
     and increases in costs to taxpayers for investigating, 
     prosecuting and punishing those crimes.
       Few of these problems have been documented as communities 
     and states across the nation instead focus on gambling as a 
     way to boost their economies and increase tax revenues. But 
     for Minnesota the social costs of gambling are emerging in 
     vivid and tragic detail.

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