Compulsive Gambling - An Independant Study

Gambling News - September 21st, 2009 - Written by Glen

There is more than a handful of people who cry out against gambling in all forms. Many argue that casinos and card games attract more compulsive gamblers than any other type of gambling, but this appears to not be the case. Casinos, poker rooms, and sports betting are rarely available to people all throughout the state, but there is one option that is available to almost every American citizen - the lottery.

It was a dull weekend all around, so it was decided to put the power of the press to work. All over the city in which we report, there are hundreds of lottery vendors. Going around the town, it was also decided to stake out some of these locations. I waited in front of the gas station in which I buy my coffee in the morning prior to heading into the office, and there was a gentleman whom I've seen in and out of the store nearly every day, purchasing those fiendish little scratch cards. So I accosted him on our way out the door, and asked him a few questions. First and foremost, I asked him how often he plays scratch tickets. His response? Daily. Every day, he is rubbing the latex off of those pieces of paper. I pushed into further detail, and he claimed to spend over $100 dollars a day on his tickets. I gritted my teeth and pressed on, hoping he would answer my next, more intrusive question. How often, I asked, did he make back his money, or even end with a surplus. He claimed that he was invariably in to the lottery hundreds of dollars a week. Scarcely, he claimed, did he recoup his losses. He scratched the ticket he had just bought in his truck, listlessly smoking a cigarette, then walked back into the store - cashing out a ticket worth $500 dollars. He said that this barely made up for his losses through out the week.

I had asked if this was the only form of gambling he regularly participated in, and he said yes. Then I asked if he would ever consider online gambling, and he said, "it sure beats wasting gas going to the store to lose even more cash." I told him about the options, and he decided to look into some of the USA online casinos available. I slipped him my number, and asked him for an interview after he had played his fair share of online games.

I continued on with my day like this, trying to harvest as much information as possible. A data set typically includes 20 different examinations, and one control. Since my experiment was hardly conducive of the scientific method, I tried to surpass the twenty person mark. I ultimately requested information from 57 different people, 21 of which told me where I could stick my pen - I could only guess that they were speaking metaphorically. Out of the remaining 36 individuals, 19 of them claimed that they purchased tickets every day. Of these fifteen, each one admitted to paying for the $20 or $30 dollar tickets. Eight of the players claimed that they purchased tickets infrequently, perhaps once or twice a week. The remaining nine stated that they rarely ever purchased these tickets, and they had not purchased a ticket in over a month.

Most of these people had no idea about online gambling, and many of them stated they were not interested. While it is not my place to say that the 19 who regularly purchased tickets, it is obvious that dumping hundreds of dollars into the lottery each week is as least moderately detrimental. Three of those who were interviewed stated that they were unaware that online casinos could be lucrative or enjoyable, and several had even signed up by the end of the night.

Online gambling remains illegal, yet 43 states have lotteries. Much negative attention is sent toward online gambling, and the legal climate shows no sign of change. Online gamblers or civil rights activists alike are all urged to write congress, their governors, and even the president with praise toward online gambling. Only by a large enough force beckoning the government to reconsider their archaic and draconian stance on gambling will we see the results. Besides, the money for the health care reform has to come from somewhere, and not from China.

(To protect the privacy of the interviewed, no names were taken accept for those who accepted future contact.

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