Vice Is Nice
William Safire and Frank
Rich hail from opposite ends of the political spectrum, but on the subject of
gambling, you could barely squeeze a poker chip between them. Safire preaches
his immovable conviction "that casino operators are predators; that
state-sponsored lotteries make a mockery of public policy; that politicians who
are on the take from gambling interests are wallowing in the occasion of sin."
Counterpoint, Frank? "Already, such gambling-saturated towns as Biloxi, Miss.,
are looking like Jimmy Stewart's nightmare vision of Bedford Falls in It's a
Wonderful Life . The stench of influence-peddling suffuses some state
governments where gambling rules. In the Midwest, riverboat casinos can be an
economic boon but sometimes suck local retail businesses dry. Statistics
suggest that crime, domestic abuse and alcoholism rise in gambling's
wake--while the poor most conspicuously get poorer."
Legal
gambling brings out the latent puritan in many Americans. The right detests
gambling because it promises something for nothing. The left hates it because
it enriches corporations by emptying the pockets of the gullible lower classes.
Republican right leader Ralph Reed and the more-liberal-than-thou Harvard
political scientist Michael Sandel condemn it, as do Ralph Nader and Gary
Bauer.
Everyone seems to detest legal gambling--everyone, that is,
except the public. Once regarded as a low habit, gambling is now generally
treated as wholesome entertainment in all states but two. Americans spend
nearly $51 billion a year on various games of chance--twice as much as they
spend on movies, plays, operas, and spectator sports combined.
But
gambling's place at the table is threatened by the puritans, who've used their
political muscle to help establish a National Gambling Impact Study Commission.
They hope its June 1999 report will prove their claims that gambling wrecks
lives, stimulates crime, saps local economies, mercilessly exploits human
weakness, and sustains itself through bribery and corruption. A review, then,
and a brief refutation of their best arguments.
People Become Addicted to Gambling: The
critics warn of an exploding epidemic of addicted gamblers, but a recent study
by researchers at Harvard Medical School's Division on Addictions argues
against this notion. An estimated 1.6 percent of American adults will become
pathological gamblers, compared with 6.2 percent who will succumb to drug
addiction and 13.8 percent who will become alcoholics. A study published last
year claimed that the legalization of casinos causes an increase in suicide
rates. Indeed, Nevada's suicide rate is the highest in the country, double the
national average. But New Jersey, home of Atlantic City, enjoys the lowest
rate. Mississippi, the South's gambling Mecca, falls slightly below the
national average.
Legal
Gambling Fosters Crime: Exhibit A for the prosecution is Atlantic City,
which went from being No. 50 among American cities in crimes per capita to
being No. 1 after the arrival of casinos. This increase fails to account for
the city's huge influx of tourists, who on any given day outnumber residents by
more than 2-to-1. As noted in a study by University of Maryland Professor Peter
Reuter, homicides barely increased at all, despite the influx of outsiders, and
assaults rose only about as fast as the average daily population. The real
increases have come in robbery and aggravated assaults. Elsewhere, though, it's
impossible to detect any consistent relationship between the existence of
casinos and the prevalence of lawlessness. Jeremy Margolis, who headed the
Illinois State Police when the state introduced 13 riverboat casinos, has
testified that "crime has not been a problem." Looking at rural Colorado, Texas
A&M scholar Patricia Stokowski found that with the arrival of casinos, "the
likelihood of becoming a crime victim in Gilpin County has decreased."
Legal Gambling Depletes the Local
Economy: Economists normally extol anything that allows consumers to
satisfy their preferences, but several members of the profession depict casinos
as the enemy of prosperity. Earl Grinols of the University of Illinois
excoriates them as "a shell game, attracting dollars from one person's pocket
to another and from one region to another." Another view holds that life for
the casinos means death for restaurants, car dealers, hardware stores, and
other wholesome businesses unless legal gambling attracts massive numbers of
new tourists.
But these
are the wrong measures of the economic value of gambling establishments.
Existing businesses are threatened when a new business comes to town, whether
it's Nordstrom or a shoe repair shop. No economist with ambitions for tenure
would dream of dismissing a business as a "shell game" merely because its
revenue diverts revenue from other businesses.
Legal Gambling Causes Corruption: Casino
operators are portrayed as the Typhoid Marys of political corruption, the usual
evidence being their lavish bankrolling of politicians. But of the 16
industries that gave "soft money" to the two major political parties in 1996,
the gambling industry ranked 16 th , according to the ultrafastidious
Center for Responsive Politics.
Casino owners are right to
take a greater-than-average interest in the workings of government. 1) Until
recently, their industry was illegal almost everywhere. 2) They cannot operate
without hard-to-get government licenses. 3) Their many enemies want to
legislate them out of existence.
As long
as we're talking about corruption and exploitation, we should not forget that
the wickedest gambling sharpies don't live in Las Vegas but in the state
capitals, where the lotteries are headquartered. The lotteries' pitiful
payout--about half of all money wagered, compared with 92 percent or so at your
average casino--rightly draws cries of outrage. If the critics were interested
in remedying the lotteries, they'd have the states repeal their monopolies on
these games and let the market compete away the excess profits.
Whose Life Is It, Anyway? Gambling's
opponents never tire of reciting statistics and anecdotes to suggest that the
costs of legalized gambling dwarf any possible benefits. But they fail to count
the central benefit--the diversion and pleasure it provides to millions of
people. Until 1978, casinos were accessible only to people with the means to
travel to Las Vegas. The relaxation of prohibitionist laws has brought them
within easy reach of most of the American public, and the public has voted for
them with its feet. The overwhelming majority of these patrons gamble
responsibly and impose no burden on their fellow citizens. They treat games of
chance as exactly that--games.
Yet critics insist on
portraying gamblers as a pitiable class of suckers, enslaved by fantasies of
unearned wealth. It's hard to see why. No one accuses movie theaters or
gardening-supply outlets of ruthlessly exploiting the weaknesses of clients who
turn over their money only because they lack the self-control to refuse. Most
people who patronize the lottery, the track, or the slot machines end up
poorer, with nothing to show for the transaction--which is also true of people
who eat in restaurants and attend concerts. To incurable bluenoses, gambling is
an infuriating scam. But why assume gamblers are being fooled? It's more
reasonable to assume that they know they will probably lose but are happy to
take that chance for 1) the pleasure of playing and 2) the chance of coming out
ahead.
In the end, that's a decision
they ought to be free to make, unimpeded by moralists and social reformers who
think ordinary people cannot be trusted to look after their own interests. If
gambling were the grim scourge portrayed by its opponents, it would not have
gone from a contemptible vice to an innocent diversion in a single generation.
People who have visited casinos and played the lottery have seen that misery
and damnation don't necessarily follow, either for themselves or for
surrounding communities. Gambling has become a widespread pastime for the
simple and unassailable reason that it adds to the sum of human happiness.
That's reason enough to leave it alone.
