High Stakes: The Rising Cost of America's Gambling Addiction, by Sam Skolnik
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High Stakes: The Rising Cost of America's Gambling Addiction, by Sam Skolnik
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What the explosive growth of legalized gambling means socially, politically, and economically for America.Forty years ago, casinos were legal in just one state. Today, legalized gambling has morphed into a $119 billion industry established in all but two states. As elected officials are urging voters to expand gambling’s reach, the industry’s supporters and their impassioned detractors are squaring off in prolonged state-by-state battles. Millions of Americans are being asked to decide: are the benefits worth the costs? With a blend of investigative journalism and poignant narratives of gambling addiction, award-winning journalist Sam Skolnik provides an in-depth exploration of the consequences of this national phenomenon. In High Stakes, we meet politicians eager to promote legalized gambling as an economic cure-all, scientists wrestling with the meaning of gambling addiction, and players so caught up in the chase that they’ve lost their livelihoods and their minds.From the Hardcover edition.
High Stakes: The Rising Cost of America's Gambling Addiction, by Sam Skolnik - Amazon Sales Rank: #770401 in Books
- Published on: 2015-06-16
- Released on: 2015-06-16
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .50" w x 6.00" l, .81 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 248 pages
High Stakes: The Rising Cost of America's Gambling Addiction, by Sam Skolnik Review “This important book will be of interest to all Americans but should be required reading for politicians who see gambling as a panacea for their state’s fiscal problems.”—Library Journal “Read this book: If you have a casino near your home. If you know someone who gambles. If you have kids. If you gamble. Sam Skolnik has drawn from a mind-boggling array of sources and data on gambling pathology and casino-industry economics, proving that, like it or not, casinos and gambling addiction are inexorably entwined."─Christina Binkley, author of Winner Takes All: Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, Gary Loveman, and the Race to Own Las Vegas and columnist for The Wall Street Journal“Combining his award-winning skills as an investigative reporter with his insights as a gambler, Sam Skolnik’s High Stakes examines the underbelly of America’s addiction to gambling. Propelled by the gambling industry’s promises of jobs and economic development, and ushered in by politicians assuring painless revenue streams, Skolnik reveals the truth in this important and long overdue book. High Stakes is a must read for every citizen who wants to understand the true cost of legalized gambling.”—Reverend Tom Grey, Field Coordinator and National Spokesperson for the Stop Predatory Gambling Foundation“Sam Skolnik tells this story with the added chilling authority of someone struggling to control his own poker habit. The result is a fascinating glimpse at the gaming industry’s seductive appeal and the price we're paying as gambling is legalized more and more around the country.”─Pete Earley, author of Super Casino: Inside the "New" Las Vegas “Sam Skolnik takes you into compelling territory—the nation’s trillion-dollar gambling empire, the world of pathological addiction it has spawned, and its deceitful public relations spin. With the research skills of a journalist, a cast of poignant characters, and a provocative personal story, Skolnik’s High Stakes is an important exposé.”—Sally Denton, investigative reporter and co-author of The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and its Hold on America“Skolnik rips off the sparkly silicone sheen of glamour that coats the [Las Vegas] Strip and shows the whole skein of pathologies we live with here.” —J. Patrick Coolican, Las Vegas Sun columnistFrom the Hardcover edition.
About the Author Sam Skolnik began his journalism career as a news aide and freelance writer for the Washington Post. He went on to report for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Las Vegas Sun and has also written about gambling for the New York Times and Salon.From the Hardcover edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. From chapter 2 Welcome to Las Vegas, Problem Gambling Capital of the World Walk into a Las Vegas casino, or any of the almost countless bars, groceries, and retailers throughout the region with video poker machines, and there is a good chance you will see a rack of glossy pamphlets showing an orange sun setting over a black ocean. The words When the Fun Stops are stenciled above the image. Every eighteen to twenty-four months, the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling prints a 200,000-copy run of its brochure. For more than a decade, the council has sold the brochures in order to help satisfy Nevada Gaming Commission regulations that require every licensed gambling outlet in the state to provide information on the nature and symptoms of problem gambling in “conspicuous places,” including ATMs and casino cages. Some casino companies produce their own materials. But several others, including MGM Mirage and Station Casinos, have used the council’s brochures for years (MGM Mirage changed its name to MGM Resorts International in June 2010). The council distributes the remainder to local seniors facilities, community centers, and schools as part of its efforts to raise awareness about the dangers of gambling. Inside, the pamphlet provides a description of problem gambling, a listing of warning signs, and a toll-free number to call for help. The catch phrase “When the Fun Stops” was devised by Howie C., who has contributed more than anyone over the last four decades to support problem gamblers in Las Vegas—and arguably the country. “One of things I’m most proud of is, you know the ‘When the Fun Stops’ brochures that are all around the state? That was my idea,” he said. “I coined that phrase. The thing I’m happy about is that they have to be there, by state law. They have to be everywhere there are machines.” Howie—who asked that he not be identified by his full last name given his thirty-seven years in Gamblers Anonymous—is a small, trim man with a gray and white goatee that points off of an angular face. At seventy-one, he is clear-spoken and has a sharp recollection of recent and decades-old events in his life. We spoke over a late breakfast at a Las Vegas diner. The story of Howie’s descent into addiction is not exceptional. What is extraordinary is the story of how in the early years, beginning with his first GA meeting, he nearly single-handedly built the infrastructure to aid problem gamblers in Las Vegas, and then, part of the rest of the United States. When I mentioned to a friend of mine from GA in Seattle that I was moving to Las Vegas, he urged me to look Howie up. “He’s a legend,” he said. Howie first reached his gambling limit in 1971, six years after moving his family from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to become a professional gambler. Quickly realizing that he would not be successful in his new choice of profession, he found a career in the casino business, like many Vegas gamblers. Howie spun so out of control that he contemplated suicide because of his gambling, so he searched for a Gamblers Anonymous meeting in Las Vegas. Unable to find any GA presence in the nation’s gambling capital, he took his family on vacation to San Diego and attended his first GA meeting there. It was a revelation to be able to tell his story to others who had undergone similar traumas and to hear their stories. The other gamblers told him about the one small weekly meeting then held in Las Vegas and how to find it. He showed up the following Monday evening at a Methodist church just blocks away from the downtown casinos. Five people including Howie sat around a card table. But it was a different experience than the San Diego meeting. Only two of the five attendees spoke—by engaging in an hour-long argument— and a couple of the people actually were there to get gambling tips, not to talk about the destructiveness of their habit and their need to quit. It was like an alcoholic showing up to an AA meeting because he needed directions to the nearest bar. Howie concluded that he needed to get involved and set up other weekly groups. In part, this was self-preservation: he had to attend, and therefore create, meetings closer to the beginning of the weekend, or there was a greater chance he’d slip and gamble. He quickly became the founding father of the GA movement in Las Vegas. For the first decade after he started with GA, he founded all of the meetings in Vegas. And he took on all the necessary roles to help the meetings grow: founder, meeting chair, secretary, public relations liaison. “Every position there is in GA, I did them all,” he said. By 1981, he estimated that there were twenty-eight different weekly meetings in the region. He also helped start meetings in several western and southern states, and internationally, in England, Iceland, and Australia. In time, Howie founded the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling, an offshoot of the National Council on Problem Gambling that educates state residents and procures funding for treatment programs and a toll-free help line. For more than two decades he also worked as a counselor with the Problem Gambling Center in Las Vegas, the leading gambling treatment facility in the state. He was, as he says, a man of many hats. That changed on March 18, 2009. After thirty-seven years of abstinence, Howie gambled. Soon after, he left GA and was fired from the Problem Gambling Center after being spotted placing a sports bet at a locals casino in north Las Vegas. Robert Hunter, the founder and clinical director of the center, said he received e-mails from recovering gamblers around the world distressed by Howie’s return to a gambling life. He said he urged them to dwell on the notion that Howie might someday come back to the movement—and that regardless, the good he did could never be undone. “He can’t do anything that erases the lives he’s touched,” said Hunter. “He’s helped more people than Albert Schweitzer.” There’s a reason why Howie was easily able to spread his gambling abstinence gospel during his early days in Las Vegas, and why after decades in recovery, he found himself in a position to fall off the wagon quickly. It’s the same reason why many Las Vegans have suffered devastating downward spirals after finding themselves caught in gambling’s grip. Las Vegas possesses unique qualities for a city—its casino culture is embedded into neighborhoods far beyond the tourist-centered Las Vegas Strip and into the rest of the Las Vegas Valley. In addition to the more than two dozen huge casino resorts on the Strip, there are more than twenty-five full-service casinos specifically designed to lure the “locals” trade as opposed to tourists, as well as the dozen casino/hotels in the city’s older downtown district, which also in part cater to locally based gamblers. This gambling mecca has become the nation’s problem gambling capital. In the last several decades, gambling has been absorbed into every facet of life in Las Vegas, and the consequences have been dire. Local residents have found themselves hooked. In turn, this has helped lead to higher gambling-related social costs than anywhere else in the country. As voters around the country are weighing whether to expand gambling’s reach, and as the notion that increased availability of gambling leads to more problem gamblers gains credibility, where better to test this theory than Las Vegas? Where better to show what could happen to other cities and towns if gambling was legalized to anywhere near the same extent? The Las Vegas area’s population has exploded over the last decade and residents are inundated with opportunities to gamble. There are 14,000 video poker and slot machines that chime day and night in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas and its suburbs, in more than 1,400 restaurants and bars and retailers of all types, from big-chain groceries and drug stores to 7-Elevens and Kmarts. That is not counting the 1,150 machines at McCarran International Airport. They are seemingly everywhere. Upon arrival, new residents find the highest problem and pathological gambling rates in the country and more Gamblers Anonymous chapter meetings than in any other city—fourteen per day on average. There are an estimated 115,000 adult problem and pathological gamblers in Nevada—mostly clustered in and around Las Vegas. Their issues have become fixed parts of the region’s communal landscape. Partially due to this, Las Vegas and Nevada boast higher rates of crime, bankruptcy filings, home foreclosures, divorces, and suicides than anywhere else in the country. It would not be fair or correct to conclude that the highest problem gambling rates in the country were the direct and sole cause of these problems. For example, authorities have noted that local police have been unable to grow as fast as the population, a contributing factor to the high rate of crime. There are other similar, valid, if partial, explanations for each of these indicators—including the notion, bolstered by studies on the region, that Las Vegas often attracts people inclined to contribute to these social ills. Yet in survey after survey, it has become clear that increased problem gambling leads to increased social costs. In dollar terms, a study on the topic coauthored by prominent University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), researchers concluded that problem and pathological gambling among southern Nevada residents results in costs conservatively estimated to be between $301 million and $469 million per year. There can be little question that Las Vegas is a damaged community—and no doubt at all that the effects of gambling’s immersion into its culture has played a significant role.From the Hardcover edition.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Illuminating look into America's gambling addiction By Alan A. Elsner Sam Skolnik makes an admission right upfront in this penetrating look into America's gambling habit: he himself has been grappling with a gambling addiction for the past 10 years.It has not killed him or driven him into bankruptcy or to suicide or to drugs or crime -- but it has degraded his performance as a human being and a responsible citizen. He has left bills unpaid, borrowed irresponsibly, neglected his career and allowed important personal relationships to wither.Skolnik's point is well-taken. What has happened to him on a personal level is happening to the whole country. Gambling is not killing America -- but it is subtly degrading its performance, making us a worse country, morally, economically and socially.This is a well-researched and well-written book, full of sad personal histories. Skolnik makes the point that gambling is at its heart a giant system for redistributing wealth away from the poor who can least afford it and into the pocket of powerful lobbies and corporations. Just as individuals become hooked on gambling, states, cities and communities become hooked on the taxes they gather from the industry -- which do not cover the social costs that gambling creates. Cities and states may resist allowing casinos to establish themselves -- but the gambling industry can lose vote after vote -- until they finally win one. Once they win, they are in -- and they're never going away.Gambling, in the words of one economist quoted here, is a "sterile transfer of money, creating no new value." Like prisons, it brings low-paid jobs into communities that need them -- but it sucks money from the weakest members of society.Skolink's portrait of Las Vegas is particularly chilling. Far from the glitzy casinos full of high rollers, he shows a city that preys most of all on its own most vulnerable citizens. The suicide is roughly double the national average and the highest in the country; Nevada also leads the nation in bankruptcy filings, it leads in six different crime categories including murder and rape, it leads in home deliquencies, divorce and homelessness.My one criticism of this book is that the author doesn't really prescribe solutions to this problem. But perhaps as one who combats his own addiction every day, he knows there are no magic bullets. Some individuals, we are told, may have a predetermined propensity to embrace addictive lifestyles. Perhaps what is true for individuals is also true for nations.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Amazing insight By Tory I have never gambled in my life. Ever, yet this was an engaging book to read. First, the introduction is heartbreaking. Even though the author perhaps wasn't as bad off as some people with gambling addictions, it was still hard to read about his struggles. "It's not easy to write these things. There's a certain shame attached to confessing a gambling addiction in our culture, even more so than copping to being an alcoholic or a cocaine addict. Many still believe that people gamble excessively because of a lack of willpower or because they're simply immoral. these antiquated beliefs are beginning to fad, as doctors, scientists, and researchers are increasingly concluding that pathological gambling is a behavioral addiction that affects the brain in much the same way as substance dependencies."But this isn't just a memoir about the author's struggle with addiction, though that component adds so much to this book! The statistics, insights, and way he writes about it makes this book a worthy and compelling read. I learned so much, and I learned to have compassion on the people yet recognize the harmful attributes of gambling, both in personal lives, and in communities,If you are addicted to gambling, or know people who are, or just want to gather more facts and perspective on gambling, I highly recommend this well-researched book. One could argue that he's biased due to his struggle, but his perspective makes it even more of a reason to read this book and consider these things. Add to that, the style of writing, tone of this book is one that draws you into what (for some) could be perceived as a boring subject. This is not a boring subject; it is one that each of us should be aware of and learn more about. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have read this book and I hope it makes an impact on others who read it.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. The stakes are high and getting higher By N. B. Kennedy This is an extremely well-researched and reported book about the gambling life and the toll it takes on individuals and on society. The author examines not only the end result of gambling, but also its roots, the reason games of chance appeal to the human psyche.Mr. Skolnik delves deeply into facets of gambling that I've never seen addressed before; for example, the particular allure of gambling in Asian cultures. He interviews dozens of people, gamblers themselves as well as those involved in both promoting and regulating the gambling industry. His narrative is enlivened by these insightful conversations.I looked in vain, though, for a chapter on gambling and the elderly. Living as close to Atlantic City as I do, I find it puzzling and sad that those who can least afford to gamble -- the elderly who live mostly on Social Security and Medicaid -- flock to casinos that cold-heartedly take their food, utility and rent money, luring them there with shuttle buses and free buffet tickets. My spouse's elderly aunt kept a shelf full of "lucky" elephants that she took on her trips to the casinos. She bragged about wins that were obviously fictitious, given her living situation. It makes me angry even today.The author also undercuts his arguments against gambling by confessing his own penchant for poker. While he recognizes in his head the dangers of high-stakes poker, and admits the money he has lost to it, the aversion hasn't taken hold in his heart. His continuing fascination for the game is obvious, and to me, equally as sad as any of the other stories he tells in this book. "For what it's worth, I was ranked by the site [a poker industry website] to be among the top 4,100 poker tournament players in the world." What is that worth, Mr. Skolnik? I'd love to read more of this author's personal story when he finally does fold.
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