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 probable 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.

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 1000 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; the simply make the money.

Credit card companies - there are now more than 7,000 - 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 on to consumers through higher rates, fees and penalties, says Ruth Susswein, executive
director of Bankcard Holders of America, a non-profit consumer education group.  “They’re making
os 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
$176,000 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 K-Mart 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 19993, 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 shot-gun to his head and killed himself.  In addition, at least
122 Minnesota gamblers have attempted suicide, according to director 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, researches 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 ofr investigating,
prosecuting and punishing those crimes.

Few of these problems have been documented as communities and states across the nation instead
of 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.   Source: April 1996, Readers Digest, Condensed from Minneapolis Star Tribune, by Chris Ison with Dennis J. McGrath.