[Pages S3323-S3324]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

GAMBLING'S TOLL IN MINNESOTA

<bullet> 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.<bullet>

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