Gambling — You Pay Whether or not You Play

Cost to Individuals

Sui­cide – ½ of addict­ed gam­blers con­tem­plate sui­cide, 1/5 attempt suicide
Addic­tion – Gam­bling oper­a­tions get most of their prof­it from addict­ed gam­blers. 1/25 casi­no gam­blers, 1/5 sports gam­blers become prob­lem gam­blers. Chil­dren & youth are more vul­ner­a­ble to gam­bling addic­tion. This feeds into oth­er addic­tive behav­ior. When sports gam­bling became legal in TN, calls to addic­tion hot­line sky-rocketed.
Bank­rupt­cies – When a gam­bler bank­rupts, their cred­i­tors are hurt – and all who work for them.
Crime – Orga­nized crime, per­son­al prop­er­ty crimes, white col­lar crime, assaults
Divorce – 2 ½ times the rate of divorce for non-gamblers
Abuse of Spous­es & Children
Sex trafficking/Prostitution

Cost to Economy

Per­son­al Sav­ings dwin­dle, leav­ing no emer­gency net.
Non-secured debt increases.
Spend­ing on basics like clothes, cars, appli­ances goes down.
Bur­den on health care sys­tem increas­es due to addic­tion issues, stress relat­ed conditions.
Jobs and busi­ness­es are destroyed as gam­bling can­ni­bal­izes local restau­rants, venues, and retail.
Busi­ness­es are hurt by ris­ing per­son­al bank­rupt­cies, loss of productivity.
Employ­ees addict­ed to gam­bling more like­ly to steal from employ­ers, get fired, or miss days of work.

Cost to Government

Crime inves­ti­ga­tion — theft, embez­zle­ment, orga­nized crime, trafficking,
Social ser­vices cost – Wel­fare, food stamps, hous­ing assistance
Court sys­tem becomes more con­gest­ed with ris­ing divorce, bank­rupt­cy, col­lec­tions, crim­i­nal cases
Jail Costs, Mon­i­tor­ing of Parolees
Unemployment

Common Arguments for Gambling w/ Answers

1. Peo­ple are gam­bling any­way. If com­mer­cial gam­bling is legal­ized in GA, prob­lem gam­bling rates like­ly dou­ble, ads pro­mot­ing gam­bling would be legal, and the gov­ern­ment can confiscate
per­son­al prop­er­ty to cov­er gam­bling debts. You could also say “Peo­ple are already any­way” – speed­ing, steal­ing, abus­ing, rap­ing, traf­fick­ing – Is that OK as long as we can tax and reg­u­late it?

2. It’s a free mar­ket issue. Gam­bling is not free mar­ket as an entire reg­u­la­to­ry agency is cre­at­ed and leg­is­la­tors lim­it mar­kets via licens­ing to a few profiteers.

3. Gam­bling doesn’t hurt any­one but the gam­bler. See pre­vi­ous page.

4. I gam­ble and I don’t have a prob­lem or addic­tion. Gam­bling busi­ness makes lit­tle prof­it off non­prob­lem gam­blers and can’t suc­ceed with­out cre­at­ing prob­lem gam­blers. Their games are designed to trig­ger addic­tion in vul­ner­a­ble people.

5. Peo­ple are cross­ing state lines to gam­ble. First – gam­bling and prob­lem gam­bling increase dra­mat­i­cal­ly with easy acces­si­bil­i­ty. Sec­ond – look at every state that relies on gam­bling rev­enue – their econ­o­my and social stats are worse than Georgia’s. Do we real­ly want our state to be more like Mis­sis­sip­pi, Louisiana, Illi­nois, New Jer­sey, Kentucky…?

6. We need the tax rev­enue. First, the costs from gam­bling issues far exceed the rev­enue. One could use the same excuse for legal­iz­ing opi­oids. Next, as gam­bling oper­a­tions make huge prof­its, they have $$ to influ­ence your elec­tions. They will replace “unfriend­ly” law­mak­ers, then sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly lessen tax­es and reg­u­la­tion of gam­bling. Last, if casi­nos are allowed in GA, Indi­an tribes will be able to open casi­nos that are less reg­u­lat­ed and pay NO state taxes.

7. It will be good for GA tourism, or agribusi­ness, or sports fran­chis­es. It will be bad for Geor­gians GA gov­ern­ment, and GA businesses.

8. Sports gam­bling isn’t bad like casi­nos. It is 5x more addic­tive, much more acces­si­ble because the “casi­no” is your phone or com­put­er. That makes chil­dren easy targets.

9. Horse rac­ing is cool. You can race hors­es with­out gam­bling. But they can’t make prof­it from gam­bling on horse rac­ing alone – most US tracks have either shut down or become “Casi­nos” with casi­no games.

10. Gam­bling is like invest­ing in the stock mar­ket. Big dif­fer­ence– when you invest in the mar­ket, you have rea­son­able expec­ta­tion of prof­it, the com­pa­ny you invest in expects to prof­it, and the cus­tomer ben­e­fits by increased goods or ser­vices. With gam­bling, the gam­bling com­pa­nies win, almost every­one else los­es. Those rare gam­blers who win today usu­al­ly lose tomorrow.

11. Don’t force your reli­gious views on the rest of us. It would be so easy to make a num­ber of “reli­gious” argu­ments against gam­bling, but the eco­nom­ic and social real­i­ties relat­ed to gam­bling are so com­pelling, com­mon sense should suffice.

12. I like my neigh­bor­hood pok­er night or office pool on sports games. We are refer­ring to com­mer­cial­ized gam­bling, not casu­al bet­ting among friends or co-workers.

www.MomsAgainstGambling.com