[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 80 (Thursday, June 18, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1170-E1172]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      GAMBLING AND AMERICA'S YOUTH

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 18, 1998

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I want to call to my colleagues' attention a 
story on the front page of the June 16 New York Times titled, ``Those 
Seductive Snake Eyes: Tales of Growing Up Gambling.'' The bad news is 
that gambling is growing. The worse news is that gambling addiction is 
growing fastest among young people.
  The article says, ``There is a growing concern among experts on 
compulsive gambling about the number of youths who--confronted with 
state lotteries, the growth of family-oriented casinos and sometimes 
lax enforcement of wagering laws--gamble at an earlier and earlier age 
and gamble excessively.''
  The story quotes a recent Harvard Medical School study which was 
conducted by Dr. Howard Shaffer which found that the rate of problem 
gambling among adolescents is more than twice the rate for adults.
  This article is shocking. It cites stories of young people who have 
hit the bottom young--and all because of gambling.
  One young man got hooked on gambling as a teenager. The problem was 
so bad, his parents had to put locks on all the rooms and closets in 
the house so he wouldn't run out and sell the family belongings to 
gamble. He has been to prison twice for credit card fraud and writing 
false checks. Later in the article, he talks about how he first got 
interested in gambling. When he was growing up, he used to help his 
grandmother pick lottery numbers at a neighborhood store, and he used 
to go with her on her gambling trips to Atlantic City. He would wait 
for her outside the casino, peering in the window and wishing he could 
play, too.
  The article talks about another young person who started gambling 
when he was 13 years old. With his buddies, this teen used to pay craps 
near his house, place bets on pick-up basketball games, and play a dice 
game called ``see-low.'' Now he is in a treatment center for drug and 
gambling problems.
  The New York Times piece said that in one high school in the 
Northeast U.S., kids said they knew a fellow student who was a 
professional bookie who booked bets right there at their high school. 
Amazingly, that school set up a mock-casino as part of its prom night 
festivities. The school principal said the students had no problem with 
the various games--they knew them well and apparently needed no 
coaching.
  But this is a problem everywhere, in all of America. According to the 
article, a Louisiana State University study conducted last year found 
that among Louisiana young people aged 18 to 21, one in seven were, and 
I quote, ``problem gamblers, some of them pathological--youths with a 
chronic and progessive psychological disorder characterized by an 
emotional dependence on gambling and a loss of control over their 
gambling.''
  Everyone is worried about tobacco use among teenagers, and I am, too. 
But we've got another problem, and we really need to pay attention.
  I hope this country wakes up. I hope our governors wake up. I hope 
this Congress wakes up.

                [From the New York Times, June 16, 1998]

        Those Seductive Snake Eyes: Tales of Growing Up Gambling

                           (By Brett Pulley)

       Atlantic City--Like a first kiss, getting the car keys for 
     the first time or walking into a bar and buying a first 
     drink, gambling has become a rite of passage for young people 
     on their way to adulthood.
       With casinos in 26 states and lotteries in 38, youths who 
     have watched their parents choose from a hefty menu of legal 
     gambling activities right in their backyards are going on 
     dates, spending their prom nights and joining college 
     classmates at the nearest casinos.
       Along with this change in the American cultural scene, 
     there is a growing concern among experts on compulsive 
     gambling about the number of youths who--confronted with 
     state lotteries, the growth of family-oriented casinos and 
     sometimes lax enforcement of wagering laws--gamble at an 
     earlier and earlier age and gamble excessively.
       These experts fear that the proliferation of youthful 
     gambling will lead to more cases like that of a young 
     Philadelphia man who became an addicted gambler as a teen-
     ager. For the young man, now 27, the ``bottom'' came after he 
     had made two trips to prison for credit card fraud and 
     writing false

[[Page E1171]]

     checks, attempted suicide and robbed his family.
       ``By the time I was 17, my parents had put a lock on 
     everything in the house--bedrooms, pantries, closets,'' said 
     the man, Michael, who is in a treatment program for 
     compulsive gamblers. Like other addicts in recovery programs, 
     Michael agreed to be identified only by his first name. ``If 
     I could take 30 towels out of the linen closet I would sell 
     them for $10 to place a bet,'' he recalled.
       A study conducted last year by Louisiana State University 
     found that one in seven Louisianians ages 18 to 21 were 
     problem gamblers, some of them pathological--youths with a 
     chronic and progressive psychological disorder characterized 
     by an emotional dependence on gambling and a loss of control 
     over their gambling.
       Dr. Howard Shaffer, a professor of psychology at Harvard 
     University, recently conducted an analysis of nationwide 
     studies of gambling addiction. He found that the rate of 
     problem gambling among adolescents was 9.4 percent, more than 
     twice the 3.8 percent rate for adults. ``Young people have 
     been gambling since the beginning of time,'' he said. ``But I 
     think now, for the first time, young people are growing up 
     having lived their entire lives in a social environment where 
     gambling is promoted and socially accepted.
       ``It used to be that young people said, `I'm 21, let's go 
     have a drink.' Now they say, `I'm 21, let's go gamble'.''
       Children get their lessons in wagering all around them--
     from the sports trading cards that they buy hoping to find 
     one with an instant and large monetary value, to the 
     chocolate chip cookie company that advertises during 
     Saturday morning cartoons, offering $1,000 to the lucky 
     child who buys a package with the chocolate chips missing. 
     And although children have been gambling for years, the 
     fundamental principle of gambling--buying a chance to win 
     more money--is indeed more pervasive in the lives of young 
     people than it has ever been, some experts say.
       The local governments that sponsor lotteries, as well as 
     the casino industry and other businesses, do their part, 
     whether intentional or not, to enhance gambling's appeal in 
     the eyes of the young. Lottery scratch cards have bright, 
     cartoonish graphics. Video poker machines resemble the video 
     machines that a generation of children have grown up playing. 
     Video arcades for children along the Boardwalk in Atlantic 
     City include reconditioned slot machines that work just like 
     the real thing but offer prizes instead of money. And the 
     casino industry, by surrounding itself with amusement parks 
     and attractions that appeal to the young, has given parents a 
     reason to bring children along when they visit places like 
     Atlantic City and Las Vegas, introducing adolescents to 
     casinos and cultivating future gamblers.
       ``Market-savvy managers are grooming the next generation,'' 
     said Marvin Roffman, a Philadelphia-based gambling analyst. 
     ``The kids go to the amusement park for the day, and when the 
     family gets back to the hotel room, Dad is talking about how 
     he did at the blackjack tables and Mom is talking about how 
     she did at the slots. The kids are listening and it's making 
     an impression on them.''
       With so many other things to worry about, like teen-age 
     pregnancy, drug abuse and drunken driving, many parents and 
     educators say they have not yet focused on gambling as one of 
     their major concerns.
       ``I know we have students, probably a large number of 
     students, who gamble,'' conceded William Steele, the 
     principal of Atlantic City High School. On the desk in his 
     outer office, there is a stack of pamphlets for students to 
     read about compulsive gambling. And although the school's 
     student resource center lists counseling for problem gambling 
     as one of the services it provides, Mr. Steele admitted that 
     little has been done to encourage students to seek help for 
     gambling problems. ``It's not an area that we have taken a 
     keen interest in,'' he said.
       It is true that like other rites of passage, gambling will 
     prove harmless in the long term for most of the young people 
     who try it. Dr. Shaffer said that many teen-agers 
     experimented with gambling and lost interest as they became 
     adults. One primary reason that teen-agers are so interested 
     in gambling, he said, is that adults have failed to inform 
     them of the dangers. ``I think it's because of the whole 
     social milieu that we've provided these young people,'' he 
     said.


           The Problem--Teen-Agers Losing Control of the Dice

       While much is left to be learned about the long-term impact 
     of gambling's pervasiveness, it is already quite clear that 
     some youths are destined to have problems with their 
     gambling. Gambling experts estimate that 10 to 15 percent of 
     youths who gamble become ``problem gamblers,'' meaning they 
     suffer some loss of control over their gambling behavior. And 
     according to the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New 
     Jersey, of those who experience more severe problems and 
     become pathological gamblers, most are people who start 
     gambling before they reach 14.
       One such case is that of Malcolm, a 17-year-old youth from 
     Plainfield, N.J., who at 13 was playing craps in his 
     neighborhood and wagering on pick-up basketball games and 
     ``see-low,'' a game played with three dice that is popular 
     among teen-age gamblers.
       ``I always gambled, so I thought that I may have a 
     problem,'' Malcolm said. After a recent conviction for 
     marijuana possession, Malcolm was sent to New Hope 
     Foundation, an in-patient addiction center in Marlboro, N.J. 
     Compulsive gambling was diagnosed, and now he receives 
     treatment for both drug and gambling problems.
       Cole DiMattio, one of Malcolm's counselors at the center, 
     said that it was Malcolm's interest in gambling that led him 
     to drugs. ``All of his gambling,'' Mr. DiMattio said, 
     ``looking for that crowd, brought him into the drug 
     culture.'' When he was a child, Malcolm said in a recent 
     telephone interview, his parents often played the state 
     lottery and visited the casinos in Atlantic City. ``They 
     didn't take me with them'' he said. ``But I wanted to go.''
       Valerie Lorenz, executive director of the Compulsive 
     Gambling Center, a treatment program in Baltimore, said that 
     while many teen-agers were compulsive gamblers, few sought 
     treatment while they were still in their teens. ``It just 
     takes a while for the addiction to develop,'' she said.
       Michael is a case in point. He traced his interest in 
     gambling back to growing up in Phiadephia, where he helped 
     his grandmother pick lottery numbers at the corner store and 
     joined her on frequent trips to Atlantic City, an hour's 
     drive away. He recalled standing outside the old Playboy 
     casino, peering through its gigantic window.
       ``I stood outside that glass and watched my grandmother and 
     thought, all I ever want in life is to be on the other side 
     of that glass,'' he said.
       He got on the other side before long, he said, and by 15 he 
     had used fake ID's and was a regular at the casinos, 
     receiving free limousine rides to and from Philadelphia and 
     compliementary hotel rooms from casinos that rarely qestioned 
     his age. Betting $100 to $2,000 a hand on blackjack, he 
     financed his gambling any way he could. He said he robbed 
     local prostitutes several times and in a single week wrote 
     $35,000 in bad checks at the bank where his father was a vice 
     president.
       ``One of those prostitutes could have blown my head off,'' 
     he said. ``But it didn't matter, as long as I was able to 
     stay in action, that's all that mattered.'' He is now 
     married, working at a bakery and living in southern New 
     Jersey. He attends meetings of Gamblers Anonymous, he said, 
     and has not placed a bet in four years.
       But not all young problem gamblers are able to withstand 
     the travails wrought by their excessive wagering. Last 
     November, just after running up a $6,000 debt betting on the 
     World Series, Moshe Pergament, a 19-year-old college student 
     from an affluent Long Island family, decided to end his 
     gambling, and his life. He bought a toy handgun and drove 
     erratically on the Long Island Expressway, causing police 
     officers to stop him. When he was pulled over, he aimed the 
     gun at the officers, who responded by shooting and killing 
     him. The police said they found letters in Mr. Pergament's 
     car that revealed the gambling debt and his intention of 
     having the police shoot him, a phenomenon known as ``sucide 
     by cop.''


            The Policing--Officials Watch, Trying to Respond

       In parts of the country where gambling has flourished 
     especially fast, the problem with under-age gambling is 
     particularly acute. In Louisiana, a state that has long had 
     horse racing and back-room card games but over the last 
     decade has added riverboat casinos, video poker machines, a 
     state lottery and casinos operated by American Indians, 
     officials were jolted into action after the Louisiana State 
     University study found that youths there were three times as 
     likely as adults to become problem gamblers. The study, 
     conducted by the department of psychiatry, surveyed 12,066 
     adolescents grades six through twelve in public and private 
     schools in the 1996-97 school year.
       The Louisiana State Legislature this year raised to 21 from 
     18 the minimum age for playing the state lottery and video 
     poker machines inside more than 5,000 bars, restaurants and 
     truck stops. Most states require lottery players to be at 
     least 18. About half the states with casinos or video poker 
     and slot machines allow 18-year-olds to play, while the other 
     half, including Nevada and New Jersey, require those gamblers 
     to be at least 21. The majority of states with parimutuel 
     betting on events like horse racing, dog racing and jai aiai 
     allow 18-year-olds to bet.
       In Louisiana, after a local television reporter used an 
     undercover camera recently to show that under age gamblers 
     were easily boarding the more than a dozen casino riverboats 
     docked around the state, state gambling regulators are now 
     threatening to rescind the licenses of casino operators who 
     cannot keep under-age gamblers off their boats. In other 
     states with legalized gambling, there are similar concerns. A 
     citizen watchdog group in Illinois, for example, recently 
     filmed under-age students drinking and gambling on the 
     state's riverboats. The state gaming board then took steps to 
     enforce age minimums.
       ``The truth of the matter is under-age gambling is a little 
     like under-age drinking,'' said John Kennedy, Louisiana's 
     secretary of revenue and a member of the state gaming control 
     board. ``Minors, by definition, don't have the reasoning 
     power of adults. If you don't have the reasoning power than 
     you can't know your limits.''
       Still, many teen-agers simply do not want to wait until 
     they are old enough to gamble. In Atlantic City last year 
     38,502 juveniles were escorted out of the city's 12 
     casinos, according to the state's casino control 
     commission. An additional 52,364 under-age would-be

[[Page E1172]]

     gamblers tried to enter a casino and were turned away.
       Too often, though, experts say, enforcement is lax.
       A familiar scene played itself out recently at the 
     Tropicana Casino here. Madelyn Carabello was locked in a 
     hypnotic trance as she dropped coins in a slot machine and 
     watched the reels spin to a stop. After she had been playing 
     for an hour and a half, a security guard approached her and 
     asked for identification, then escorted her out. If her 
     flawlessly youthful face, striped denim jeans and tennis 
     shoes were not enough to tip the casino's security staff that 
     it had an underage gambler in its midst, surely the gold 
     pendant around her neck was a dead giveaway. It was a large 
     heart, surrounding the numeral 19, her age.
       But despite her age, it was not the first time that Ms. 
     Carabello, a freshman at the Fashion Institute of Technology 
     in New York City, had gambled in a casino.
       She recalled the eagerness with which she and 10 classmates 
     boarded a gambling boat on their prom night in Miami.
       ``We heard that you only had to be 18'' to gamble on the 
     boat, she said. ``I had heard how it was in a casino, that 
     you could win money and stuff. I was like, `Okay, let's do 
     it.' ''
       Youths gamble because they see everyone around them doing 
     it, not because they care that lotteries are sanctioned by 
     the state or that casinos are legal, said Henry Lesieur, 
     president of the Institute for Problem Gambling in Pawtucket, 
     R.I.
       ``I don't think that kids are thinking at this level,'' he 
     said, ``whether the state sanctions it or not is irrelevant. 
     What is relevant is that it is available in places like the 
     grocery store and they can see it being advertised on TV.''
       The casino industry, keenly aware of the potential for 
     compulsive gambling to become the bane that nicotine 
     addiction is to the tobacco industry--and aware that a 
     Presidential commission will issue a comprehensive report 
     next year on the impact of gambling on the country--has 
     recently begun to acknowledge the problem and take pre-
     emptive steps. New programs to discourage under-age gambling 
     are being paid for and implemented by the industry, and 
     studies on compulsive gambling, particularly among under-age 
     gamblers, are being conducted through research grants from 
     the industry.
       ``Most of the under-age gaming going on in this country is 
     not going on inside the casinos,'' said Frank Fahrenkopf, 
     president of the American Gaming Association, the casino 
     industry's lobbying organization. He pointed out that many 
     young people gamble on sports and play lotteries. ``We are 
     trying to reach out to that area of the population.''
       The interest that children develop in gambling often starts 
     long before they are old enough to sneak into a casino. A 
     group of Long Island parents, concerned that their young 
     children were hooked on sports trading cards, filed lawsuits 
     against six of the major sports trading card companies in 
     1996, claiming that the companies have colluded to conduct an 
     illegal gambling enterprise by inserting rare and valuable 
     cards that could instantly be redeemed for cash. The 
     lawsuits, filed in New York, New Jersey, Texas and 
     California, are pending, although one claim in Texas was 
     dismissed by the court there. James M. Schaefer, an 
     anthropologist at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., who 
     conducted research for the plaintiffs, visited card shops and 
     sports memorabilia shows where the cards are bought and 
     traded. What he found was that children as young as 6 were 
     doing what is known as insert card chasing, spending $2 to $6 
     for a pack of cards, ripping them open, quickly flipping 
     through them in search of the valuable inserts, discarding 
     the ``garbage cards'' and buying more.
       ``The kids are driven to find a valuable insert card, and 
     they'll spend all the money they have to find it.'' Mr. 
     Schaefer said. Some gambling opponents have raised similar 
     concerns about other seemingly benign products aimed at 
     children, like the scratch-and-win promotions often offered 
     by McDonald's, and a current promotion by Nabisco, which 
     offers $1,000 to anyone who finds a bag of Chips a'hoy 
     cookies without any chocolate chips. Ann Smith, a spokeswoman 
     for Nabisco, denied that such promotions encourage gambling. 
     ``They are purchasing the product,'' she said. ``It's a 
     consumer promotion geared toward added value.''


             The Next Bet--Coping in a Culture Of Gambling

       Many students in places like Atlantic City become familiar 
     with casino games because they work after school or in summer 
     at the casinos. Although customers must be 21, the minimum 
     age for working at a casino is 18. Many young gamblers said 
     that they had jobs and financed their habit using the same 
     disposable income that other young people spend at the movies 
     or the mall. However, gambling experts said that many of 
     those who gamble at school or elsewhere come from affluent 
     families and have more money than the average student. 
     Casinos here and in other cities have created opportunities 
     for young people. In addition to jobs, they provide a wide 
     range of assistance to local teeagers, from scholarships to 
     mentoring programs. But with some of those same young people 
     becoming increasingly fascinated with gambling, some 
     communities are now questioning whether they should accept 
     any largess from the casinos in their neighborhoods.
       In Louisiana, casino employees participate in career days 
     at high schools, and casinos have donated to students 
     everything from pumpkins for Halloween to playing cards 
     emblazoned with casino logos. But now, after opponents of 
     gambling complained that these donations were only veiled 
     attempts by the casinos to cultivate future loyal customers, 
     gambling regulators are considering a ban on donations from 
     casinos to students. ``We are trying to make a determination 
     as to whether the stuff they do in the schools is 
     marketing,'' said Hillary Crain, chairman of the state's 
     gaming control board.
       Many experts said that the best method for dealing with the 
     escalating interest in gambling among youths is to teach them 
     more about the potential downside to gambling, and to get 
     them to better understand probability, the ratio of the 
     number of times that something will probably occur to the 
     number of possible occurrences. If they better understood the 
     extent to which the odds are against them, experts said, 
     fewer children would be so anxious to gamble. Still, said 
     Edward Looney, the executive director of the Council on 
     Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, ``Youngsters are 
     youngsters, and gambling is an exciting thing for them to do 
     because it's risky,''
       But even as schools preach against gambling, in many places 
     it has become a part of the culture of adolescence. Growing 
     up in Warwick, R.I., where residents can bet on the state 
     lottery. jai alai and dog races, play video lottery machines 
     or drive to the Fox woods casino an hour away in Connecticut, 
     Seth Jackson anxiously, awaited the day he would turn 21 and 
     could step into a big, rambunctious casino to gamble to his 
     heart's content.
       ``It was a big deal for me the first time,'' Mr. Jackson, 
     22 a senior at George Washington University, said during a 
     recent ``senior week'' bus trip to Atlantic City, the 
     gambling capital of the East Coast. ``Everybody around me 
     gambled when I was growing up.'' he said, as he stood 
     surrounded by classmates and slot machines inside the 
     Tropicana.
       At Atlantic City High School here, students said that 
     betting on sports and playing card games for money was 
     common. Several students said in interviews that they knew of 
     a fellow student who worked as a professional bookie, laying 
     odds on games and collecting bets. ``The guy books bets right 
     in school,'' said Tom Le, 16 a sophomore.
       In May, on the night of the school's senior prom, one of 
     the activities arranged for the evening was a mock casino, 
     set up inside the cafeteria. Students received clips and 
     played casino games like blackjack and craps. ``I was really 
     astonished at how well they knew the games,'' said Mr. 
     Steele, the principal. He said he believed that gambling had 
     captured the fancy of young people because it made them feel 
     like adults. ``I guess it's a nice feeling to go into the 
     casino, play and receive complimentary drinks,'' he said. 
     ``How can you tell them, here it is, it's exciting, but you 
     can't do it? We have to face it, it's here to stay. It's a 
     matter that's going to have to be dealt with. I don't know 
     how. Just hope and pray that it's done on a small scale.''