Second Annual Conference on Problem Gambling
 Awareness—Focus on the Future
Doubletree Seattle Airport
April 29, 2008

(As written, with some further modifications to protect individual privacy)

Welcome to the Second Annual Western Regional Conference on Problem Gambling Awareness – Focus on the Future. To the attendees who are here from other states, welcome to Washington!

We have a wonderful state and I hope you will be able to spend some time outside of the hotel room walls and get out and explore.

Those of you who will be with us tonight you will see the fun side of me, the part that enjoys a little rock and roll music.  I hope you will enjoy it too. However, I am here this morning to talk about something much more serious that impacts so many lives – the issue of problem gambling.

Through the course of this two day conference you will hear stories of abandonment, hopelessness and rescue.  You will learn from treatment experts, policy makers, casino operators, legal minds and many others who deal with this issue every day. 

You may also begin to understand the seriousness of problem gambling and how it is impacting the lives of thousands of our citizens.

I am proud to be the honorary chair of Focus on the Future and hope you will join me in celebrating our successes as we work together to find ways to reduce the incidence of problem gambling throughout our region. This morning I am going to give you some examples of how gambling can impact lives and provide you with some information about how it effects our state and society then talk a little about action.   

I’ll start with a story about one of my staff members. The Saturday before last (a staff member) stepped into (a local casino).  It was the weekend before her birthday and she and her partner were out on the town to celebrate.

(Staff member) stepped up to the Flaming 7 nickel slots and started to lay her money down, betting 27 nickels at a time off her pre-paid casino card. The machine began to pay off in increasingly larger amounts so Jackie stuck with it and her excitement grew.

Suddenly bells started ringing, lights were flashing and everyone around was watching with envy as the machine paid out $1,000.  (Staff member) was thrilled of course, and did what a lot of us would do in the same situation – she immediately started pouring money into a nearby dollar slot hoping for a $12,000 jackpot.

But before she got too far, (the two) stopped, collected their winnings and left the casino with a net of around $900 – the winnings minus the 50 bucks each (they) had told themselves they could “blow” that night.   

(This couple) are typical of many people who gamble – they hit to the casino once or twice a month and limit themselves to whatever they decide to lose and write off any losses to the cost of entertainment.  For them sometimes it’s 50 but more often less than 30 dollars. Once in awhile they get lucky.

You all know people who can’t stop at that and that’s why were here today.  Research tells us somewhere between two and five percent all gamblers are compulsive gamblers, in other words plain out of control. For them it’s not the money, it’s the addiction, often motivated by the desire to escape from something else going on in their lives.  People tell me everyone who gambles compulsively has lost the same amount, whether they’ve gambled hundreds or millions – it’s all relative to them and it all has the same miserable price.

The flashing lights and media messages urging us to gamble bombard us every day. It’s Good to Play, says our state Lottery folks, and the Lottery is indeed good for us as a state. The Washington Lottery generated $477 million in revenue for our state coffers in Fiscal Year 2007, helping to pay for schools, stadiums and exhibition centers and being pumped back into our communities in other ways.

By state Gambling Commission tally our citizens collectively spent nearly $2 billion in gambling last year, with $1.4 billion of that in the tribal casinos and the rest in non-tribal card rooms, the lottery, punch boards and pull tabs, raffles, bingo, horse racing and the like.

And this amount is increasing by a hundred million or two each and every year, not counting what is being thrown around in penny ante card games in living rooms and college dorm rooms and all that digital wheel spinning on the Internet. 

(Staff member and her partner) are joined by millions, young and old, who are drawn to our gambling houses morning and night. And it’s not that it’s all bad.

Many of our tribal neighbors are now able to earn respectable wages and send their kids to college, all from gaming revenues.  It’s the lure of cash that causes I-5 to be so full of flash.  But it’s off I-5 and deep within our communities that this problem is festering, ruining lives and waiting like a rattlesnake in the grass to shoot its poisonous venom in the artery of its prey.  I say rattlesnake because usually there are loud rattles of warning before the strike that too often we do not hear or see. 

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner – an old gambling phrase - isn’t always enough. If only everyone who places a two dollar bet COULD win, buy dinner and run.  Instead we have people like a couple who won millions in the lottery a few years ago and have nothing to show for it today because they went for broke, then went broke.  For them it wasn’t good to play, not at all.

If only we didn’t have people like a (high ranking military official) I heard about who gambled away a 30-year military career. The (official's) career ended with a dishonorable discharge with no pension after caught embezzling thousands on government credit cards to cover bets.

By the way, that person took one more chance while awaiting court marshal by using the credit card one more time. Guess what happened? Yes, this person went from being (high rank) to the Biggest Loser and I’m not talking about the television show. Hopefully (the person) got some help in the time since. 

My heart aches when I hear these stories because they are about real people who live all around us. We absolutely need to do something, especially as the number of gamblers among us rises and our youth is exposed to gambling at an earlier and earlier age because of the lure of easy money. But that lure is also a downfall. 

We have to look about the price of containing the fun for everyone to losses they can safely live with. The question we need to repeatedly ask ourselves is if we are doing enough to provide the services and tools to help those who have become a slave to their habit?

Are we as a state doing enough? Are our churches and non-profit service and social service organizations doing enough?  Are we providing enough incentives to the casinos and card rooms to help them spot their clientele and recognize the red flags that are flying high above the heads of their customers who might have a problem?

By the way, you might have a gambling problem when your addiction counselor says he thinks the “odds are good” that you will beat your gambling problem and you take that as reason to immediately call your bookie.

Okay, one more. A man rushes into his house and yells to his wife, “Martha, pack up your things. I just won the state lottery!” Martha replies, “Shall I pack for warm weather or cold?” The man responds “I don’t care – as long as you’re out of the house by noon!”

All right, for morning speeches I use jokes to wake people up so now that I again have your attention …

We that the only difference between a gambling addiction and other addictions such as alcohol or substance abuse is that gambling causes no physical harm and because of this there are no physical maladies – like being strung out on the floor from a drug overdose – that slow you down or kill you. In a way this further complicates the problem. Physical harm or not, the eventual net damage can be about the same. 

Let me tell you about someone who is here, someone in this room. I don’t know who it is because one of my staff people who helped me with some research for this speech talked to him and didn’t tell me who it was and it’s probably best that way.

Let me assure you he is here and gave us his permission to use his personal story today. For the sake of this story let’s call him Ralph.

Ralph was an attorney practicing in another state. I say WAS because problem gambling eventually cost him his law license.  Before moving to Washington  some14 years ago now, Ralph was not only an attorney for 10 years but also a promising politician, or as he calls himself an “up and coming political animal” with an eye on a local city council seat.

Ralph was a card room gambler, long before the tribal casinos, and he played hard. He would be at the casino on the weekends and would literally play for two to three or even four consecutive days at a time.  He continued to practice law, but not very well.

He ignored his clients, caring about them only as long as they came into his office with his check, which of course he would blow in the next round of poker. After a time Ralph lost not only his clients’ money. He lost two houses. He lost his marriage. His cars were repossessed. He got to the point where he had no money whatsoever and was on the verge of eviction. Even worse, he had developed a severe nerve disorder caused by sitting in a chair for days at a time while gambling and being immobile.

One day Ralph decided it was all over. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to do the unthinkable.  He got on his couch and just lay there not eating, not drinking and not caring a bit if he lived or died. 

After days of doing this Ralph says, he heard a voice. The voice told him to get his a.. – the voice’s words, not mine - off the couch and get to a Gamblers Anonymous meeting. That was 17 years ago. Ralph started going to GA meetings, got the help he needed and today is doing everything he can to help others in his position get their lives back together.

He is also speaking out on the issue to everyone who will listen. Hooray for Ralph. He is now a part of the solution. We need you and more like you, Ralph, whomever and wherever you are. I know there is not just one, but a lot of Ralphs and Ralpharinas in this room and I applaud all of you who are working so hard to address problem gambling. 

In my office I have a slogan – "Helping Kids Grow up in Safe Communities with Opportunity. " By opportunity I don’t mean gambling opportunity. 

By adopting that slogan I want to use it as a way to instill the idea that it all starts with kids and providing a safe place for kids in our communities will make us all better people and contribute to better places.  So with this slogan I always look for ways to use the position I have been fortunate to have to contribute a little myself toward this purpose, whether it is in support of some of our mentoring programs or in going out to schools and speaking to kids about making positive choices in life.

The opportunity part of the slogan also incorporates both the international relations and economic development work that I do but that is not the reason I’m here today so I won’t dwell on that.

What I would like to dwell on is the importance of parents setting good examples and households establishing good practices that will lead to healthy kids and communities. Many of you know that every two years we do a Healthy Youth Survey in our state’s schools that collects data about drug and alcohol use and other health habits. The last one was done in 2006 and in 2008 that survey will for the first time include two questions about gambling among our youth. It will be very interesting to see the results of that.

Meanwhile, without data we have to look at states like Delaware and Louisiana that have surveyed their youth to give us some perspective of gambling among our youth. 

Surveys of more than 6,000 middle and high school age students conducted in those states indicate about a third gamble with regularity. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to learn from our survey next year that our number of kids who gamble is about the same.

Research in Delaware shows that kids who gamble are more likely to cut school, be in gangs and engage in other risky behavior. The Web site Not a Game Dot Org states the American Psychiatric Association reports 10 to 15 percent of young people surveyed have significant gambling problems; and 6% of the teens who have tried gambling have become pathological gamblers.

The average problem gambler starts at about age 10. Part of the problem is that because parents don’t see gambling as physically harmful and an acceptable way for kids to socialize they have no hesitation about letting their kids join a Friday night game of Texas Hold ‘Em with their buds.

Texas Hold ‘Em is holding a lot of kids’ attention right now, especially because it has been all the rage on the sports channel ESPN where winning gamblers are achieving the same hero status as winning golfers, football players or basketball stars. Especially the parents who condone gambling need to learn how to talk to their kids about its inherent risks, just as they would about the risks of drinking alcohol.

Gambling may start at the secondary level or earlier but at the college level of course gambling is very risky business.  Some of you might know Ty Lostutter, a clinical graduate student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington and studies this very issue who spoke at this conference last year when it was at the UW.

Ty reminds us of research clearly showing that those who develop gambling problems early in life often carry it forward to their adult years, just as with alcohol. College students are especially at risk because they have more leisure time, are exposed to money decisions for the first time in their life, may have a credit card or two and are more easily influenced by the media.

The advertising world knows this market and seizes on it for many things. The rates of college gamblers with a gambling problem are five to nine percent, almost double than the three to five percent of the population among adult problem gamblers.  

College students also spend a lot of time on the Internet, where gambling options are multiple and can be done at all hours and without much notice – until the credit card bill becomes due, that is. Sports wagers, slots, poker, it’s all there and for scores of college kids with their laptops it can be a quick click or two to a bet between studies and after awhile they are hooked. 

They’ve even had the College Poker Championship, an online tournament that attracts thousands and awards scholarships to the winners. I see the goals of getting a great college education and winning at poker in direct and serious conflict. And as a state we really have no idea the depth of the issue of online gambling among college students or anyone for that matter because no one has really found a reliable way to track it.

We need to figure out ways to address the problem of youth gambling and get it under control. But by no means is the problem limited to youth – adult gambling directly impacts our kids too. 

A 47-year-old Thurston County woman we’ll call Henrietta has five kids, one 21, two in their teens, one eight and one nine. Her counselor, who told us her story with her permission, said by the time she came to him she was broke both spiritually and financially, owing $22,000 in late fees alone on her credit card debt from gambling. 

A machine at a local tribal casino had become her master, taking priority over her kids and other things most of us would regard as being important in life. She equated sneaking out to play the machine as the same someone else might to having an extramarital affair. She would lie to her kids and lie to her husband, telling them she was going to the store when she was really slipping out to the casino.

After 100 or so lies of this nature they quit believing her. She has been attending Gambler's Anonymous meetings for some time and is also in individual counseling where she is learning how to anticipate the consequences of her actions, or as her counselor says, “play the tape.”

Another of his clients, "Tonie", embezzled $75,000 from her employer to pay gambling debts before she realized she had a problem. She was eventually caught and is now facing charges. Meanwhile she has gone back to school to learn another skill.

There are countless stories out there and as professionals you all know more than I. But it is the stories that bring home the numbers so they bear telling over and over. Thank goodness for some dedicated professionals and peer-help groups like Gamblers Anonymous who are there for the compulsive gamblers in our midst.

As the population of casinos grows and our population of gamblers grows we need to do more to raise awareness about this issue along the lines of prevention and treatment.

We applaud the 27 compact tribes for agreeing to join the state in committing Point One Three percent of gross revenues from gambling operations into problem gambling programs – given the scope of the problem much more is apparently needed.

We need to continue to train employees in our casinos and card rooms about spotting the warning signs of problem gamblers and be able to stop the action for these people and get them some help. We need to get information to our senior centers and senior organizations about spotting problem gambling in our senior population as we hear far too much about seniors losing it all to betting.

We need to do a more precise way of correlating gambling with crime, alcohol use and substance abuse data so we can give this issue the kind of attention it deserves. As I said earlier we need to put more tools in the hands of parents and educate them about how to talk to their kids about gambling as well as recognize the warning signs and consequences.

And as with alcohol, we need to examine the messages that companies through the media are sending to our young people to make sure they are advertising responsibly.

We need to keep the lines of communication open between professionals like you at conferences like this and more. Great organizations like the Evergreen Council on Problem Gambling that put on this conference and coordinate help line services for gamblers are a part of the solution, but perhaps the state needs to find ways to provide more resources to facilitate information sharing as well as recovery.

And finally we must somehow get a handle on Internet gambling and figure out how much it’s really costing us all and ways we might better control it.

Compulsive gambling is a local problem, a state problem, a regional problem and a national problem. You here today, just by taking part, are the beginning of the solution. There must be a way to gamble for recreation, not ruin. I wish you the best of luck to you in finding this way. If there is a way we can help in Olympia I know you will continue to communicate that to us.

Thank you, and see you tonight!