March is Problem Gambling Awareness Month. What better time to raise awareness of problem and addicted gambling as a public health issue than for the Kentucky General Assembly to pass legislation to establish a Problem and Addicted Gambling Awareness and Treatment Program?
HB141, introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Terry Mills, and co-sponsored by Rep. Larry Clark and Rep. Jim Wayne, and SB63, introduced in the Senate by Sen. C.B. Embry, would do just that.
The Kentucky Council on Problem Gambling, a private, non-profit organization whose mission is to raise awareness of problem gambling and advocate for the availability of treatment for problem and addicted gamblers and their families, urges the Kentucky General Assembly to pass the legislation. With adoption, Kentucky will join 39 other states with legal gambling that publicly fund programs to prevent and treat problem and addicted gambling.
KYCPG is neither for nor against gambling. Gambling exists and has since the dawn of man. But where gambling was once exclusively considered a personal weakness or a moral failure, we now know it is a treatable mental health disorder.
There is no publicly funded program in Kentucky to address the public health concerns of problem and addicted gambling even though about $2 billion is legally spent, wagered or bet on legal gambling activities in Kentucky. The state government receives about $250 million annually from gambling activities through transfers (Kentucky Lottery), excise taxes (parimutuel horse racing), and fees and fines (charitable gaming at bingos and special events). KYCPG believes it is responsible for an entity that profits from an activity it sanctions to provide assistance to those who may be harmed through participation.
Addicted gambling is a societal problem. A 2008 survey conducted for KYCPG by the University of Kentucky Survey Research Center identified in Kentucky 9,000 addicted gamblers, 51,000 problem gamblers, and 190,000 individuals at-risk of developing a gambling problem. Various research reports place the annual social costs (bankruptcy, crime, criminal justice, social services, lost productivity and wages, suicide) of addicted gambling between $9,000- $15,000 per gambler.
Multiplying by the lowest estimate results in an annual social cost in Kentucky of $81 million. HB141 and SB63 request $600,000 in the first year and $1.2 million in year two and each year thereafter to fund the program. The $1.2 million is less than one-half of 1 percent of the revenue the state receives annually from gambling activities.
An ominous warning was offered at the 2015 KYCPG Educational and Awareness Conference by Julie Hynes, an award-winning prevention specialist from Oregon. She showed how current electronic gaming activities compare with gambling. The games stimulate the same brain chemicals related to addicted gambling. Further, many of the games are linked by “pop-up” ads to on-line gambling sites.
The allure is the ease of winning in a game which can be transferred to winning for money. Hynes suggested mental health professionals need to be watchful for an increase in gaming addiction, and that there could be a corresponding increase in gambling addiction. Counselors and prevention specialists trained to provide services to problem and addicted gamblers and their families through HB142 and SB63 would be in place to address this possible wave of gaming/gambling addiction that Hynes predicted.
HB141 and SB63 provide a realistic approach, which KYCPG has sought for 15 years. The bills do not raise taxes nor do they establish a new bureaucracy.
As gambling revenue continues to increase in Kentucky, most recently from the introduction of Instant Racing at parimutuel horse race tracks and Keno by the Kentucky Lottery, the funding would be available from the increased revenue and not taken from other programs. Currently, there are three more bills that have passed either the Kentucky House of Representatives or Senate that would expand gambling opportunities.
The Problem and Addicted Gambling Awareness and Treatment Program would be administered through the existing Department of Behavioral Health, Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities, and delivered through the current network of Community Mental Health Centers and certified gambler counselors, whether practicing in public or private settings. HB141 and SB63 would not go into effect until July 1, 2016, allowing for an adequate number of counselors and prevention specialists to be trained to implement the program.
The normal General Assembly biennial budget process would be maintained. It does not relieve the gambler from his or her legal responsibilities. It is not a bailout. It is a pathway to recovering his or her life.
It is time for Kentucky and its state government, which profits from legal gambling revenues, to acknowledge the existence of the potentially devastating public health concern of Problem and Addicted Gambling and seriously and significantly take concrete steps to educate the population and provide treatment resources. It is time to pass HB141 and SB63, a fair approach to address a societal concern.
Michael R. Stone is director of Kentucky Council on Problem Gambling.