Hi everyone,
For years, casino trips have been a gold mine for tour bus companies in Connecticut and across the Northeast.
But just imagine if you didn’t have to drive two hours each way on a bus from Danbury to gamble.
Pretty soon, you won’t have to imagine it. All you’ll have to do is turn on your computer and let it ride.
In the wake of the U.S. Justice Department’s Dec. 23 decision that Connecticut and other states can legalize online gaming — excepts sports gambling — two things have become pretty clear:
1.) Gambling generates a whole lot of money. Last year, $1.2 billion was spent on lottery tickets, pari-mutuel bets and charitable gaming in Connecticut, according to state officials. What’s more, those figures don’t count all the money spent at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, because those casinos are operated under the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
2.) Gambling can be very dangerous, especially for people with addiction problems. Although the state of Connecticut currently spends about $1.9 million to promote responsible gambling and to help those with gambling addictions, that’s still only about 1/1,000th of the amount spent on gambling in Connecticut.
Listen, I understand money is tight and the economy is tenuous in Connecticut. I also understand Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the General Assembly continue to look down the barrel of burgeoning budget gaps.
But for many folks, online gaming amounts to a predatory means of generating revenue. There will be consequences when online gaming comes to Connecticut in the days ahead, make no mistake about it.
“With online gambling, you’ll have it all — the casino, the card room, the horse room, everything except sports betting — and you’ll have it 24 hours a day,” said Jim Crean, director of outreach and community relations for the Danbury-based Midwestern Connecticut Council on Alcoholism and an expert on gambling addiction.
“All you’ll have to do is go from your living room to your computer room. The ease of access will make it much more dangerous,” Crean said. “The more states look to increase revenues (with online gaming), the more it potentially affects the people who can least afford to spend the money.”
Crean cautions that he is not anti-gambling, but rather, pro-responsible gambling. At the same time, he has seen too many lives destroyed by games of chance.
With in-home access coming to a Connecticut computer near you, expect those numbers only to go up.
Exponentially.
Malloy, meanwhile, defends his decision of supporting online gaming as a state revenue stream in 2012 and beyond.
He knows if Connecticut doesn’t buy in, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island will be climbing over each other for Connecticut’s gambling dollars.
“I’m not a big proponent of gaming. But what’s going to happen, based on the change in position by the U.S. Justice Department … is that there’s going to be online gaming in the United States,” Malloy said the other day in Newtown. “So it’s not a question of whether it’s going to happen. It’s quite apparent it’s going to happen.
“Therefore, you’re going to have to ask the next logical question: Who is going to benefit from that?” Malloy said. “And, quite clearly, any number of states have been proponents of online gaming — we have not been previously — but we have to accept the reality that the map has changed.”
Literally and figuratively.
Who needs a two-hour trip to Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun when you can have the same fun with two clicks on your computer?
That’s the $1 million question.
Or worse, it’s the dead-broke question.
“Some people have interpreted things to mean that Connecticut wants to start this. That’s not the case. It really isn’t,” Malloy insisted.
“If you’re asking me, ‘Do I think it’s foreseeable in the future that we may need to spend more money (on gambling awareness and education),’ I think the answer is in the affirmative. What the right level of money is and what the actual challenges will be remain to be seen.”
Dr. Lori Rugle, the state’s director of problem gambling services, said increased spending is critical to addressing the current — and future — gambling addicts in Connecticut.
“We need to do a lot of educating of the public about the dangers of online gambling,” Rugle said Friday. “This isn’t a risk-free activity.”
Indeed, it’s not.
“We usually don’t see people (for treatment) until they’ve run out of money,” Crean said. “There’s more of a social stigma with gambling addiction than there is with alcohol addiction.
“There’s no smell on your breath. Nobody is stumbling around from it. There’s no dilation of the pupils.”
Granted, online gaming revenue would help Connecticut’s bottom line. There are budgets to balance and bills to pay, after all.
But don’t think for a minute this isn’t blood money from those who are already bleeding.
