Opposition to gaming not based solely on morality

Opposition to gaming not based solely on morality

Rev. Michael Edds Contributing columnist

 

Reading the gambling owners’ response in the Laurinburg Exchange this morning, I was saddened by their gross misrepresentation of what the citizens of Laurinburg presented Tuesday evening to the city council. I did not see even one of these owners attending or speaking at the meeting. Yet, they assumed to know what was said. We never addressed the proliferation of gambling in our community as just a moral issue but from the perspective of the selling of a dangerous addiction, namely gambling and the negative effects it can have. They tried to marginalize us as a bunch of religious folks. No, I am not ashamed of being a Christian but when we attended the meeting, we came as tax-paying, concerned and involved citizens of Laurinburg. So, since these owners missed the meeting, I would like to present to them the facts.

 

Gambling is defined as “Taking a risk to obtain something and often means losing what one has and obtaining nothing.” Recently, internet gambling has proliferated all over Laurinburg. According to calculations by The Fayetteville Observer, this includes 21 locations and 451 machines, of which the city earns $88,800 in fees.

 

Some had said to me, “Hey preacher, it’s legal, provides jobs, it fills up empty buildings, so don’t get in the way of business regardless of what you and others think is moral or immoral.” However, the problem is much deeper than a moral discussion. Gambling is a deadly, brutal and highly destructive addiction. Five percent of America’s population is at risk of this addiction. That is 16 million people. It is more dangerous than drug addiction. This addiction is ravaging and destroying lives and families. It has the highest suicide rate of all addictions in the nation.

 

Dr. Howard J. Shaffer, director of the Harvard Medical School for Gambling Addiction states: “Today, there are more children experiencing adverse symptoms from gambling than from drugs and the problem is growing.” Dr. Rachel Volberg, an expert on compulsive gambling in America, states that 18 to 21 year olds are three times more likely to have problems with gambling addiction.

 

National statistics tell us that 5 percent of the US population is at risk of gambling addiction, which means 5 percent of Laurinburg and Scotland County are at grave risk to this addiction.

 

In Laurinburg that means 775 potential addicts and 1800 in the county.

 

Sixty percent of addicted gamblers will become involved in crime. In Laurinburg there will be 465 new criminals and Scotland County — 1080. These people will no longer be tax payers but tax liabilities.

 

Twenty percent of addicted gamblers will commit suicide — Laurinburg 155 people, Scotland County 360.

 

Twenty percent will file for bankruptcy — Laurinburg 155 people, Scotland County 360. Median family income is $26,802 for city and county. This addiction will affect family income in Laurinburg in the amount of $4,540,000 in a year. Scotland County will be $9,648,000. This is a tragic loss in purchasing power.

 

Fifty percent of gambling addicts will abuse their spouse and children. In Laurinburg 388 new abusers, in Scotland County, 900 new abusers.

 

Fifty percent of addicted gamblers will divorce; in Laurinburg, that means 388 families broken and in Scotland County, 900 families.

 

Research Institute on Addiction states that those living in a 10 mile radius of gambling shops can increase the chance of addiction by 90 percent.

 

Gambling addiction cost the US between $32 billion to $54 billion dollars. The cost for the city and county will be astronomical.

 

One addict adversely affects the lives of 8 to 10 other people. That is 6,200 people affected in Laurinburg, and 14,400 in Scotland County.

 

Business and Employment Costs: Lateness to work, missed work days, loss of productivity, theft and embezzlement.

 

(Statistic sources include: Harvard Medical School, Baylor University, National Council of Problem Gambling, Columbia University Medical Center, National Research Council, California Council on Problem Gambling and the Connecticut Department of Mental Health)

 

I serve on the city/county Crime and Drug Committee, which is commissioned to develop proactive ways to address the violence, crime and drugs that are rampant in our community. In the last decade, 30 young people have been murdered on our streets. The county is the fifth most violent county in the state. We have some of the highest rates on teen pregnancy, child poverty, and hunger and child abuse. We have the highest unemployment rate in the state. Gangs are thriving. Gun shots fill the night air. Drug and alcohol abuse is pervasive. Our committee’s task is daunting at best without opening the flood gate for a far worse, and far more destructive addiction — that of gambling.

 

These purveyors of gambling addiction are not opening up businesses for the community benefit or community good. They are making money off another’s calamity. They are no better than drug dealers. Those who rent buildings to these gambling shops are accomplices of this evil. Who in their right mind would rent to drug dealers so why rent to another seller of addiction? These people are selling Laurinburg’s and Scotland County’s future for a fast buck.

 

Lumberton City Council just passed an ordinance that enacts strict rules for gambling there. Our city council is the protector of our elderly, our children, our families and our quality of life. It is the first line of defense against those who would ravage our people for making money at any cost.

 

We call upon and implore the council to remove city ordinances in which these sellers of addiction can hide. We plead with our leaders to immediately take action to legislate ordinances to prohibit the most destructive of addictions.

 

There are families, men, women, teenagers, children and the elderly who will be damaged and destroyed if action is not taken. Laurinburg’s future lies in the council’s hands.

 

Failure to act will cost the city far more than the $88,800 in fees that it collects from the gambling shops. Deitrich Bonhoeffer, who bravely stood against the genocide, and hate of Hitler and Nazism in Germany made an incredible statement: “Silence in the face of evil is evil itself. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

 

We as the citizens of Laurinburg call upon our city council to take swift action to rid our great community of the plague of gambling and the destruction that it will surely bring.



http://www.laurinburgexchange.com/news/opinion-opinion_columns/4763007/Opposition-to-gaming-not-based-solely-on-morality

Why Casinos are Becoming Like Landfills

Americans still love to gamble. They just don't want casinos near where they live

By Jon Marcus/Boston

Dec. 23, 2013

Milford, Massachusetts at the holidays looks a lot like Bedford Falls, the fictional setting of the classic film “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Settled in 1662, the town of 27,000 still has working farms, its own daily newspaper, a baseball diamond behind the American Legion Hall and an annual picnic. On Memorial and Veteran’s days, parades run down a Main Street lined with white wooden churches and historic buildings made of red brick and locally quarried pink granite.

But it’s visions of Pottersville, the film’s alternate-universe world of greed, strip clubs, pawnshops, and hopelessness that have been on residents’ minds this season.

Wary of increased crime and traffic and depressed property values, Milford voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposal for a $1 billion, 24-hour casino in November, becoming the sixth Massachusetts community to say no since voters statewide opened the way for three slot parlors or casinos in 2011.

“It didn’t take long to be convinced that this was not good for a small town,” says Steve Trettel, co-chair of the group Casino-Free Milford. “If you want to get right down to the root of it, that’s really it.”

While there’s been no slowdown in the pace at which states continue to approve adding or expanding casinos and slot machine parlors, they are starting to run into trouble finding places to put them.

In addition to the cities and towns in Massachusetts, which included a neighborhood in Boston, new or expanded gambling venues have been voted down in Portland, Oregon, Newport, Rhode Island and Biddeford, Lewiston, and Washington County, Maine. In early December, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick filed suit to block a native-American tribe from opening a casino on toney Martha’s Vineyard.

Across the nation, community and business interests are pushing back against the possibility of new casinos. In Central Florida, powerful interests including the Walt Disney Company, intent on preserving the region’s reputation as a family destination, have organized to prevent the state legislature from adding casinos there. Even in South Florida, which has been more accepting of gambling, local officials are raising concerns about plans to expand an existing casino operated by a Native American tribe, citing the potential for spillover traffic and crime.

A federal application submitted by another Native American tribe to build a casino in the upstate New York town Union Springs is being fought by a coalition that includes the state’s senior Senator, Chuck Schumer, on the grounds that it would bring unfair competition for local businesses. Even Massachusetts Governor Patrick, who signed the bill to legalize casinos there, has said that he would vote against one if it were ever proposed for the Berkshires town where he has a second home.

This resistance is not because Americans don’t want to gamble. In the last 10 years, the nationwide revenue from casino gambling has grown from $29 billion to more than $37 billion, according to the American Gaming Association, which represents the casino industry.

Massachusetts residents alone spent an estimated $850 million last year in casinos in neighboring states, according to the Center for Policy Analysis at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

And 61 percent of them still like the idea of having casinos in the state, a survey by the Western New England University Polling Institute found.

They just don’t appear to want gambling near where they live. The same poll found that 55 percent of Bay State adults oppose casinos in their own communities.

“There is definitely some of that ‘not in my back yard’ going on,” says David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. “It seems that people are comfortable with the idea of casinos, but once they get into the specifics of, this is where it’s going to go and this is what it’s going to look like and this is how it’s going to affect my commute, they may be having second thoughts.”

Not every community is hostile to casinos. Several in Massachusetts have voted to allow them, including one on the site of a former chemical plant and one at a former greyhound racing track. In Philadelphia and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, casinos have been approved to replace a hazardous waste site and an abandoned factory.

“What’s clearly going on here is that the communities that have approved these are much poorer communities” than the likes of Milford, says Richard McGowan, a professor of economics at Boston College and a casino expert. When they consider the alternatives—“a prison, a nuclear power plant—most people think that casinos overall are good for a community when they replace things that are tired or old,” says Bob Jarvis, a gaming expert and law professor at Nova Southeastern Law School in Florida.

Other casinos are in largely nonresidential neighborhoods of cities such as New Orleans, on remote tribal land free from the authority of voters and elected local officials, or in rural areas. But as more are proposed in densely populated states, gaming experts say, finding places to put them is becoming more contentious.

“Overall, people are not uncomfortable with gaming,” says Steve Rittvo, a principal with the casino consulting firm the Innovation Project Group. “But people also realize that you don’t necessarily need to be the host community to get that spinoff of the impacts of it.”


Read more: Massachusetts Casinos: Gambling's NIMBY Problem | TIME.com http://nation.time.com/2013/12/23/why-casinos-are-becoming-like-landfills/#ixzz2on3LgeaK

Congratulations East Boston!

Steve Holt

New York Times (you DO realize this is national news, RIGHT?) on East Boston's HUGE win tonight:

"In Massachusetts, voters on Tuesday rejected a proposal that sought to bring a gleaming $1 billion resort casino to the fading Suffolk Downs racetrack in East Boston, according to The A.P. After a heated campaign that pitted the promise of thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in new investments against worries about crime and gambling addiction, voters in East Boston and the adjacent town of Revere voted against a dramatic new addition to their neighborhoods.

The vote was a victory for the opposition group No Eastie Casino, which ran a shoestring campaign and was vastly outspent by proponents. Many small-business owners in East Boston believed the casino would siphon off whatever discretionary money people had, and No Eastie Casino asserted that gambling would snarl traffic and increase drug use and crime.

Supporters of the casino, including Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston, who sent his troops into the area on Election Day to pull out “yes” votes, said that it would bring the communities 4,000 jobs and an infusion of money for things like new roads.

Even before Tuesday, the fate of the Massachusetts measure had been thrown into doubt when the state gambling commission raised questions last month about the suitability of Suffolk Downs’s partner at the time, Caesars Entertainment, to operate the casino. Suffolk asked Caesars to withdraw from the bid, which it did.

Chip Tuttle, the chief operating officer of Suffolk Downs, told reporters that he was not certain how the track would proceed, but the apparently lopsided vote against the casino could well have doomed the effort."

Colorado Rejects Move for Schools as Casino Fails in Massachusetts

Matthew Staver for The New York Times

Madeline Doak, 18, a student election judge, collected ballots in Denver. Taxes and marijuana were up for statewide votes.

By JACK HEALY

Published: November 5, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/us/politics/key-ballot-measures.html?_r=1&

Protect Your Community!

Have you added your name?

Join us! It couldn't be simpler!

It could NOT be easier to get this done. We need your help! It is time to let the voters of Massachusetts decide.

Please visit this website, and take a few minutes of your time to make this happen.
Visit the website, get 5 signatures, and mail in the form.
PLEASE DO IT.
www.5signatures.com

 

Your support is invaluable, thank you!!

Have you signed the RTCD Petition Yet?

REPEAL THE CASINO DEAL is a statewide, grassroots ogranization gathering signatures to allow Massachusetts voters to cast a ballot......

SIGN THE PETITION to put a question on the 2014 ballot allowing citizens a chance

to vote on the casino deal. Here’s why:

• Nearly all Massachusetts voters have been denied an opportunity to cast a ballot on the casino deal that impacts citizens in every community

• The casino deal was written to benefit lobbyists, special interests and politicians who brought casino gambling to Massachusetts, not the public interest

• Casino operators received the privilege of a regional monopoly and avoided paying for all the social costs they bring with them. You’ll pay for their bill.

• Because casino revenues are unstable and declining, the resulting hole in government budgets will require new tax increases that impact everyone

• Government-promoted casinos, like those proposed here, have proven to be a failure and required taxpayer money to bail them out (Delaware most recently)

• The lobbyists misled the public about the salaries and quality of casino employment: most casino jobs pay very little and have high rates of turnover

• Three local casinos and a slots parlor are not sustainable for a region already oversaturated with casinos, evidenced by spiraling revenues in CT & RI

Take Action and Get Involved

Who is Repeal the Casino Deal? We’re a volunteer, statewide coalition of public health, municipal, family, community, faith-based leaders and concerned citizens from all walks of life in Massachusetts. We want a voice and a vote on the bad deal that was passed to allow state government to promote casino gambling to citizens. Please help us collect signatures and donate today.

 

For more information, visit: www.repealthecasinodeal.org or email/call

Brian Ashmankas, Campaign Director, brianashmankas@repealthecasinodeal.org

Repeal the Casino Deal, P.O. Box 520162, Winthrop, MA 02152 (617) 701-7823

Printable Hand-out about Why Voters Should Sign


[Comments are 'moderated' - if you want to add your signature, add a comment and we'll make sure your signature is collected.]


To Middleboro residents: Apologies for any misunderstanding - NO CASINO IS COMING TO MIDDLEBORO!