By Denise Jewell
CNHI News Service
Fri, May 16 2008
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WASHINGTON — New legislation to appropriate $70 million for prevention of pathological gambling is being hailed as a pioneering federal effort to address the nation’s growing addictive gambling problem.
“We believe this is the first,” said Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling. “The need for it is crucial.”
Rep. Martin T. Meehan, D-Mass., is the chief sponsor of the “Comprehensive Awareness of Problem Gambling Act of 2006.”
He said he recently introduced the bill — HR6009 — after reading a CNHI News Service special report in June that detailed the rapid expansion of legal gambling in the United States and the lack of assistance programs for the millions of Americans who have become compulsive players.
Meehan said he expects several congressional representatives and senators from states with heavy gambling activity to sign on as co-sponsors.
“We need to do something now — before this problem gets completely out of hand,” said Meehan. “I’ve talked with many others in and out of Congress about it, and they tend to agree.”
Meehan’s bill would spend $50 million over five years to create a federal grant program for local treatment centers.
It would also create a $20 million fund to pay for research into the causes of problem gambling.
Meehan said he worked with Whyte’s council and other organizations concerned with problem gambling in drafting the specifics of the legislation.
Whyte said that prevention and rehabilitation programs for compulsive gamblers are now funded almost entirely by the industry and a handful of states.
“The majority of states don’t have funding for problem gambling services and problem gamblers face a number of unique barriers to getting help,” he said.
A Greater Niagara Newspaper survey found that legalized gambling generates $21 billion annually in state taxes, but only $36 million of that is spent on treatment and prevention programs — or less than one-twentieth of one percent of the profits.
“Problem gambling is an issue in all 50 states, in big cities and small towns and every Congressional district in America,” Meehan said. “So I’m confident that this bill will garner widespread support.”
In addition to research and treatment grants, the bill would appropriate $1 million to produce public service awareness announcements for use on television and radio during gambling and sporting events.
It also encourages states to use the money they bring in through gambling on treatment and prevention programs, but it does not mandate that they do so.
Whyte said the bill would help narrow a wide gap between the millions of dollars the federal government spends each year to research and treat drug and alcohol abuse and the meager dollars it spends researching gambling behavior. Washington currently spends no money on treating addicted gamblers.
John Welte, an addictions researcher at the State University of New York at Buffalo, knows about the difficulty of obtaining federal money. His team was recently denied a grant for a long-term study into the causes of problem gambling in teenagers, one of the fastest growing segments of the compulsive gambling population.
Welte said researchers studying pathological gambling compete with a wide range of mental illnesses — from schizophrenia to depression — for National Institute of Mental Health funds.
“There is a lot of bad stuff that they’re responsible for funding research to get more knowledge of those things,” said Welte. “Problem gambling is not necessarily on the top of the list. That’s not a criticism of them. That’s just the way it is.”
By contrast, research into the causes of alcohol and drug abuse has had special federal funding for decades.
“We’re about 20 to 30 years behind the substance abuse field,” said Tim Christensen, president of the Association of Problem Gambling Service Administers.
“Just to give you a little picture behind that, we didn’t have nearly the gambling opportunities and everything else that we have 15 years ago,” he said. “States were just initially starting down this road.”
Christensen said he is keeping his “fingers and toes crossed” that Meehan’s bill becomes law.
“It’s something the field has really needed, and it’s an emerging issue,” Christensen said. “It’s something that is going to keep impacting governments at a variety of levels.”
A federal gambling study commission estimated seven years ago that the social consequences of legal gambling in the United States amounted to about $5 billion per year.
The now-defunct commission had recommended a temporary freeze on the growth of gambling until social experts could better define the effects of lotteries, casinos, racinos and the like on homelessness, money crimes, bankruptcy, drug abuse and mental disorders.
But the recommendation was ignored and the gambling industry expanded deeper into the national landscape, with even more states turning to gambling revenue to help fund their budgets.
Whyte said advocates of treating problem gamblers hope Meehan and other lawmakers will stick with the effort to reach out to problem gamblers even if nothing happens during the last months of the current Congress.
And that’s something Meehan said he plans to do.
“Problem gambling is not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue,” said Meehan. “It’s about helping people who struggle with this addiction.”
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