Current Commentary

Education Funding: Don't Bet On It

Promotion of gambling benefits rarely includes the costs

For a long time we’ve been barraged with news of how American students aren’t getting the education they need to compete in the world. It’s little wonder that’s the case when considering our priorities.

When Democratic Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman ran for office in 1999, his loudest battle cry was he wanted to establish a lottery in the state to fund education. Although voters put him in office, a few months later they handily rejected his plan to legalize that form of gambling.

Now Alabama, like Mississippi, North Carolina and a host of other states, is facing stringent budget cuts because of lawmakers overestimated tax receipts. And who’s paying the price? The school children. Alabama’s primary and secondary school systems are facing a 6.2 percent proration in their budgets. In Mississippi, budget cuts are coming in at 5 percent.

I’m concerned this revenue shortfall will lead Siegelman and others to begin the rally cry again for a lottery in the state. And again I’m sure these state officials will say they have the children’s best interest at heart in doing so.

Or do they?

In a study produced in 2000 by the University of Southern Mississippi’s University Research Center, “Gaming in the Mississippi Economy,” the authors report that in compiling research for their study the team wasn’t able to fully explore the social impacts of gambling in Mississippi because “the authorizing legislation for this study did not primarily focus upon such impacts. The contract specifies that they are to be briefly reviewed, however.”

Briefly is an understatement. In all of its 67 pages, only three pages are dedicated to studying the ills gambling brings with it. The rest of the study focuses on the financial and economic “good” gambling has on state and local coffers.

Nevermind the fact the study, in those three little pages, finds that in 1996 nearly 5 percent of Mississippians could be classified as problem gamblers. But 5 percent doesn’t sound like a significant number when compared to the billions of dollars coming into the state, does it? It does when it’s put into perspective. That 5 percent equals some 150,000 fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, children and friends who have the potential to slide out of control and gamble away everything they own.

What kind of government, faced with even this little tidbit of information, would ever promote gambling to its residents? An irresponsible government, maybe?

Where the Mississippi study is lacking, one national study isn’t.

The National Gambling Impact Study Commission reveals in its 1999 research there are heavy burdens, such as increases in crime, underage gambling, suicide and divorce, placed upon communities when gambling comes to town.

This is in our children’s best interest? Unless things have changed since I crawled out from under my rock, I don’t see how inviting these problems upon our children in the name of short-term financial gain can be seen as any kind of sensible investment.

The NGISC study goes through the pro vs. con routine of stating economic benefits to communities where gambling – I’m sorry; the industry prefers I use the less stigmatizing word “gaming” – has been legalized. But there are only so many ways to say gambling generates money in areas where the economy has been depressed. And besides, what kind of argument is that anyway? Any new business in an area, be it anything from a convenience store to a clothing outlet, is going to generate economic benefit. But the big difference is not all new businesses are going to generate a slew of problems at the same time.

To this study’s credit, though, its authors explored in detail and produced a strong body of evidence showing that, despite the gambling industry’s efforts to water down and undermine claims that the bad far outweighs any good, the social ills gambling brings upon people open serious holes in society’s moral and familial fabric. Sure, the section about social ills is peppered with good news (now there’s an oxymoron) about gambling, but the bad news glares right through.

Just a few of the effects of gambling on communities listed in the report include:

• The ease of access to credit card cash advances, and the lax accountability of such transactions for gambling purposes, has led to a number of gamblers getting in trouble. Case in point from the report: The Commission heard about a couple along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, both of whom began gambling excessively at casinos, who lost approximately $70,000. When they received a letter from a credit card company demanding $10,000 in payment, the couple made a last-ditch effort to recoup the money at the casinos. They lost $2,000, then filed bankruptcy.



• In Iowa, 19 percent of Chapter 13 bankruptcies involved gambling-related debt.



• Today, millions of families throughout the nation suffer from the effects of problem and pathological gambling. As with other addictive disorders, those who suffer from problem or pathological gambling engage in behavior that is destructive to themselves, their families, their work and even their communities. This includes depression, abuse, divorce, homelessness and suicide, in addition to individual economic problems.



• Adolescent gamblers are more likely than adults to become problem or pathological gamblers. Estimates suggest as many as 1.1 million adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 are pathological gamblers, which is a much higher percentage than adults.



• Several studies have shown that pathological gambling is associated with alcohol and drug use, truancy, low grades, problematic gambling in parents and illegal activities to finance gambling.



• Suicide is an additional concern. Commissioners heard repeated testimony about suicide and attempted suicide on the part of compulsive gamblers. In Chicago, the commission heard about a middle-aged couple who both committed suicide after the wife accumulated $200,000 in casino debt.



• The commission also heard abundant testimony and evidence that compulsive gambling introduces a greatly heightened level of stress and tension into marriages and families, often culminating in divorce and other manifestations of familial disharmony. In Tempe, Ariz., Gwen Bjornson testified how her 5- and 7-year-old sons’ “lives forever changed because I was compelled to divorce their father, a compulsive gambler. Divorce is one of the most painful things that we, as adults, sometimes must face. Yet, without divorce, I am very much in doubt that I would have skirted a complete mental breakdown.”



• Family strife created by gambling problems also appears in the form of abuse, domestic violence, or neglect. One domestic violence counselor from Harrison County, Miss. (Biloxi), testified that a shelter there reported a 300 percent increase in the number of requests for domestic abuse intervention after the arrival of casinos. A substantial portion of the women seeking refuge reported that gambling contributed to the abuse.