[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 106 (Friday, July 29, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1690-E1691]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           GAMBLING EXPLOSION

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                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 28, 2005

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I remain terribly concerned about the 
explosion of gambling outlets, particularly casinos, opening around our 
country.
  I am deeply concerned about the impact this is having on our society. 
Gambling destroys families and preys on the poor. According to the 
California Council on Problem Gambling, which operates a crisis 
hotline, 3,400 callers had lost an average of $32,000 each. That's $109 
million of lost wealth, many who probably could least afford to lose 
it. Even more tragic is the fact that this statistic represents problem 
gamblers in only one state.
  Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record a copy of the article When 
Gambling Becomes Obsessive from the July 25 edition of Time magazine. I 
recently wrote President Bush

[[Page E1691]]

urging his action on calling a halt to tribal gambling, which is now 
moving off reservations. Unfortunately, the administration responded 
that they do not have the authority to address this issue. If the 
administration believes it does not have authority to issue a 
moratorium to halt new tribal gambling operations, it should send 
Congress legislation so that we can take action to give it that 
authority.

                  [From Time Magazine, July 25, 2005]

                    When Gambling Becomes Obsessive

                          (By Jeffrey Kluger)

       For a man who hasn't bet a nickel since 1989, Bruce Roberts 
     spends a lot of time in casinos. He's rarely there alone, 
     however. He usually has an escort walk him through--the 
     better to ensure that he doesn't succumb to the sweet swish 
     of the cards or the signature rattle of the dice. A onetime 
     compulsive gambler, Roberts, 62, weathered his years of 
     wagering better than many. He never lost his wife or his 
     home--although he has refinanced the house nine times. 
     ``Cards and Vegas were the two biggest things in my life,'' 
     he says. ``I'm a helluva poker player, but I have one serious 
     flaw: I can't get my ass off the chair.''
       When Roberts visits a casino these days, it's as executive 
     director of the California Council on Problem Gambling, an 
     organization that helps gaming halls run responsible gambling 
     programs. The rest of the time, he's back in the office, 
     overseeing a crisis hotline. Last year his service took 3,400 
     calls from gamblers who had lost an average of $32,000 each. 
     That's $109 million of evaporated wealth reported to just one 
     hotline in just one year.
       And California is not alone. More than 50 million people 
     describe themselves as at least occasional poker players. 
     Millions turn on the TV each week to watch one of eight 
     scheduled poker shows--to say nothing of the 1 million who 
     will tune in to ESPN's broadcast of this year's WorId Series 
     of Poker.
       Two hundred forty-seven Native American casinos dot tribal 
     lands in 22 states; 84 riverboat or dockside casinos ply the 
     waters or sit at berth in six states. And with local 
     governments struggling to close budget gaps, slots and 
     lotteries are booming. All told, 48 states have some form of 
     legalized gambling--and none of that includes the wild 
     frontier of the Internet. By 1996 the annual take for the 
     U.S. gambling industry was over $47 billion, more than that 
     from movies, music, cruise ships, spectator sports and live 
     entertainment combined. In 2003 the figure jumped to over $72 
     billion.
       All that money is coming from someone's pockets, and it's 
     not the winners'. According to Keith Whyte, executive 
     director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, as many 
     as 10 million U.S. adults meet the ``problem gambling'' 
     criteria. Kids are hit even harder. Exact figures aren't easy 
     to come by, but various studies place the rate of problem 
     gambling among underage players somewhere between two and 
     three times the rate for adults.
       Nobody thinks the gambling genie can be put back in the 
     bottle. What health officials want to know is whether the 
     damage can be curbed. What separates addictive gamblers from 
     occasional ones? Is it personality, brain chemistry, 
     environment? Can a behavior be a true addiction without a 
     chemical driving it? ``People have seen gambling in moral 
     terms for a thousand years,'' says Whyte. ``It's only 
     recently that we've begun seeing it as a disease.''
       Defining compulsive gambling is like defining compulsive 
     drinking: it's not clear when you cross the line. But if 
     there are enough signs that your behavior is starting to slip 
     out of your control (see the self-test), chances are that you 
     have a problem. It's a problem of special interest to 
     researchers because it reveals a lot about addiction as a 
     whole. One of the difficulties in understanding drug or 
     alcohol abuse is that the minute you add a chemical to the 
     body, you muddy the mental processes. ``It's hard to tease 
     the connection out because you don't know how much is the 
     drug and how much is the behavior,'' says Whyte. ``But 
     gambling is a pure addiction.''
       To see if that's true, scientists turn to such advanced 
     diagnostic tools as functional magnetic resonance imaging 
     (fMRI) machines to peer into the brains of gamblers while 
     they play. In a 2001 study conducted at Harvard Medical 
     School and elsewhere, researchers monitored subjects as they 
     engaged in a wheel-of-fortune game. The investigators looked 
     mainly at several areas of the brain known to be involved in 
     processing dopamine, a pleasure-inducing chemical released 
     during drug and alcohol use.
       Sure enough, the same areas lighted up when test subjects 
     gambled, becoming active not only when they won but also when 
     they merely expected to win--precisely the pattern of 
     anticipation and reward that drug and alcohol users show. 
     ``This put gambling on the map with other neurobiologic 
     addictions,'' says Dr. Barry Kosofsky, a pediatric 
     neurologist at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.
       Surprising support for that work came earlier this month 
     when researchers at Minnesota's Mayo Clinic reported that 11 
     Parkinson's disease patients being treated with dopamine-
     enhancing medications began gambling compulsively; one 
     patient eventually lost $100,000. Six of the 11 also began 
     engaging in compulsive eating, drinking, spending or sex. 
     Only when the dopamine was discontinued did the patients 
     return to normal.
       The dopamine cycle may not be the only thing that drives 
     gamblers. Personality also plays a part. This month 
     researchers in the U.S., Britain and New Zealand released the 
     latest results from an ongoing, 30-year study of roughly 
     1,000 children born in the early 1970s. One purpose of the 
     research was to determine which temperament types were most 
     likely to lead to addictions.
       The just released results showed that compulsive gamblers, 
     drinkers and drug users have high underlying levels of 
     negative emotionality, a syndrome that includes nervousness, 
     anger and a tendency to worry and feel victimized. 
     Significantly, they also score lower in the so-called 
     constraint category, meaning they are given to impulsiveness 
     and thrill seeking. That's a bad combination, particularly 
     when you throw drugs, drink or gambling into the mix. 
     ``It's like picking your poison,'' says psychologist 
     Avshalm Caspi of King's College in London, one of the 
     researchers in the study.
       What makes people start gambling may also be a function of 
     availability. A 1999 study ordered by the U.S. Congress found 
     that people who live within 50 miles of a casino have two 
     times as much risk of developing a gambling problem as those 
     living farther away. And the growing popularity of electronic 
     gambling only makes things worse. In one study, researchers 
     at Brown University found that while gamblers take an average 
     of 312 years to develop a problem when they're playing 
     traditional games like cards, slot-machine players fast-
     forward their addiction, getting hooked in just over a year.
       So what can be done to get problem gamblers to quit? 
     Medication, in theory, may help. Psychologists like G. Alan 
     Marlatt of the University of Washington are interested in the 
     potential of so-called opioid antagonists, drugs that might 
     partially disrupt the neurochemistry that produces feelings 
     of well-being, thus denying gamblers the kick they seek.
       More effective may be the 12 Step protocol used by 
     Alcoholics Anonymous. Gamblers Anonymous groups meet all 
     across the country, stressing abstinence and providing a 
     community of ex-gamblers to offer support. Marlatt is worried 
     that abstinence may be less effective with young gamblers and 
     is exploring cognitive techniques that instead teach kids to 
     recognize the triggers that get them to gamble too much. The 
     states may also have a role to play. Illinois has instituted 
     a self-exclusion program in which gamblers can put their 
     names on a voluntary blacklist, allowing casinos to eject 
     them from the premises, require them to donate their winnings 
     to a gambling-treatment program and, in some cases, charge 
     them with trespassing.
       Like Marlatt's moderation strategy, however, the Illinois 
     program takes a measure of self-discipline that may be the 
     very thing compulsive gamblers lack. ``In addiction, they 
     call it chasing the high,'' says psychologist Carlos 
     DiClemente of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. 
     ``In gambling, it's called chasing the big win. And that's 
     where self-regulation goes down the tubes.'' Better, say 
     DiClemente and others, to simply to put down the cards or 
     dice or cup of coins for good. As battle-scarred gamblers are 
     fond of saying, the only way to be sure you come out ahead is 
     to buy the casino. --With reporting by Melissa August/ 
     Washington, Helen Gibson/ London, Noah Isackson/ Chicago, 
     Coco Masters/ New York and Jeffrey Ressner/ Los Angeles

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