Gov. Gregoire instructs Lottery to stop marketing to teens
In a February 10 letter, Governor Christine Gregoire has instructed Washington State Lottery Director Chris Liu to develop a new marketing plan that will "ensure that we are not, in any way, marketing lottery products to youth."
"Because there may be little to no difference between marketing and advertising strategies directed at teenagers under 18, and those 18 and 19 years old, I ask that you refrain from using tools that entice those young adults to play. My concern is that, by following such a path, we would increase the likelihood of younger teenagers becoming involved in gambling at an age when they do not fully understand the risks involved.
I understand that this may mean a reduction in revenue from young adults who can play legally. In the interest of protecting more vulnerable children and teenagers, as I believe we have a responsibility to do, I am willing to take that chance." |
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THE SEATTLE TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD
Monday, January 30, 2006
“RAISE the state gambling age from 18 to 21 for casinos, cardrooms, the state lottery and scratch tickets, horse racing and bingo games with cash prizes.
That is our starting point for the conversation the Legislature is likely to have between now and the 2007 session. [...]” |
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By JENNIFER MCCAUSLAND
GUEST COLUMNIST
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 12-08-2005
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. At the grocery store I noticed a mother handing dollar bills to her small children, who eagerly fed them into a lottery ticket machine. Apart from it being illegal for someone under 18 to play the lottery, I was appalled at the message this parent was sending to her children: Gambling is child's play, a game to entertain the tykes.
The risk of gambling addiction among youths isn't amusing or child's play. The explosion of gambling in all types of venues -- especially including the present craze over poker online and on cable TV -- is driving more and more young people to bet their after-school money, their college fund or, tragically in some cases, even their own lives on gambling's many forms.
It's not just the harried parent who bears responsibility. When I contacted the grocery chain's corporate parent, the only response I received was a form e-mail. The gambling industry itself turns an indifferent eye from the problem of underage gamblers. Recently, I alerted the state Gambling Commission to reports of teens gambling in area casinos during high school lunch breaks. State investigators found that at five of seven casinos, a 16-year-old sent in as part of a sting investigation was allowed to gamble and buy alcohol.
The gambling industry's deliberate effort to hook the young is eerily reminiscent of tobacco industry campaigns decades earlier. From the glamour of Bravo's celebrity poker tournaments to the daily poker-as-sport programming on ESPN, Fox Sports and elsewhere, the industry is attempting to both normalize and entice, much like Big Tobacco once used Hollywood to sell a long drag and the seductive trail of cigarette smoke as the epitome of cool.
While access to gambling has exploded, and youths are being exposed at an earlier and earlier age, there is virtually no effort to inform parents and children about the very real dangers involved. Proceeds of the national tobacco settlement enable Washington state to spend $28 million a year on its highly successful campaign to curb teen smoking; unfortunately only pennies are spent to warn parents and teens about gambling addiction.
A Harvard Medical School study found teen gamblers are three times more likely to become addicted than their adult counterparts and the younger the age of initial exposure the higher the incidence. Other studies estimate that between 2.5 percent and 6 percent of teens are already addicted. The 1999 National Gambling Impact Study made two crucial recommendations: raise the legal gambling age to 21 and launch "targeted prevention efforts ... to curtail youth gambling."
I now take teenage gambling activities very seriously. I am one of those parents of a teenage boy who played poker in high school and thought it was harmless fun. Ten years later, Ben's gambling addiction had such a grip on him that he lost his biggest bet of all.
Poker, Internet gambling, and Black Jack became the sole beneficiaries of Ben's finances; maintaining his car was not a priority. The police report stated Ben died after losing control of his car due to mechanical failure. Actually Ben died after losing control of his life to gambling. It started as an innocent after-school poker game and ended with his car wrapped around a tree.
When Ben talked about his struggle with gambling he often said, "Kids don't realize they are not only gambling with money, they are gambling with their lives."
It's time somebody told them.
Gambling is not a sport
New York Times sports columnist Harvey Araton uses revelations of baseball star Alex Rodriguez's gambling habit to comment on the growing epidemic of teen gambling. [
Fold 'Em Before Poker Can Hold 'Em]
According to Arnie Wexler, a longtime expert on compulsive gambling, the poker rage has infiltrated coming-out parties for Jewish 13-year-olds. "Kids are telling their parents they want to have a poker party at the bar mitzvah, and the parents are doing it," Wexler said yesterday, interrupting preparation for a speech he was to give last night in Deal, N.J., at a seminar titled, "Teen Gambling: What Every Parent Should Know."
Affirming Wexler's bar mitzvah assertion that hired dancers are out and hip dealers are in was Dan Romer, the research director of the Adolescent Risk Communication Institute at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. [...] Last March, the Annenberg Public Policy Center released a survey that found an alarming spike in the percentage of boys and men between the ages of 14 and 22 betting on cards, to 11.4 percent in 2004 from 6.2 percent in 2003. Araton goes on to lament the sports entertainment industry's efforts to transform the "get-poor-quick gambling culture" into a sport, and the devastating result this is having on many teens. He closes by highlighting the concerns of one mother, whose poker-obsessed 17-year-old son has lost all interest in anything else: "I wish I had known sooner," she said.
Parents of those 13-year-olds now being conditioned to think that a good hand is as cool as a gold glove, are you listening?
