When Michigan residents voted to allow casino gambling in Detroit almost two decades ago, they did so because of the really big promises that were made to them. They were told that casino gambling would bring much needed new revenue to the city so that services provided by the police and fire department would be vastly improved and their garbage would be collected each week and public transportation would be improved so that people who had jobs could get to them on time.
They were told that people would come from all over the country to gamble in the three casinos that now hover over the city’s cultural area, throwing their shadows across the ever growing expanse of deserted neighborhoods where some of the poorest residents reside.
It did not happen. The new and high tech gold rush that promised to spill its riches onto the streets of Detroit could not save the city. Detroit is going broke.
As experts like John Kindt and Earl Grinols have shown again and again, putting casinos in cities that are already struggling as a result of population loss, the decline of manufacturing jobs, failing schools, and other urban infrastructure problems too numerous to list here, does not bring economic development.
Of course, it would be foolish to attribute the fact that Detroit is broke to gambling. In a special report for WTVS-Detroit, Desiree Cooper showed how badly things are in Detroit and how some communities are trying to cope.
But every time I visit the city of my birth, I hear stories about people, most of them black women, who have lost what little they had in the casinos in the hope that they would get a little something back.
It’s too late to turn things around in Detroit and elsewhere in the country where casino gambling has been touted as the cure all for failing economies. But as more and more public officials across this country keep singing the same song about how gambling will create new jobs and improve their local and state economies, it’s important to keep in mind that for that to happen, ordinary, hardworking citizens must lose millions of dollars.
Back in the days when it was illegal, gambling was considered a really dumb way to try and “make” some money to pay our bills. It still is, despite what our politicians tell us as they sell us down the river.
Sandra Adell, Author, CONFESSIONS OF A SLOT MACHINE QUEEN: A MEMOIR
Hi Sandy, from Australia!
Just yesterday here we received a body blow to the casino gambling reform community, when after years of activism to fight the destruction from slots / pokies and months of promising by our prime minister Julia Gillard that she supported gambling reforms that would help to stem the devastation brought to our communities by pokies…our national leader back-flipped!
She effectively pulled the pin from the promises she had made to her people, but especially a promise to a key Independent politician, Andrew Wilkie who had helped her minority government get into office, in return for her guaranteed support upon specific gambling reforms including gambler ID, pre-commitment cards for the heaviest gamblers. Now after breaking her promise to Mr Wilkie, our prime minister is pretending to still support casino gambling reform, but she has caused the issue to be delayed, has demanded that there be a trial for pre-commitment cards for pokies gamblers, has ignored research that says that the reforms have been shown to work in other countries with similar gambling systems. Thus our prime minister has ignored her duty to the public who is crying out for added protections and instead she has played right into the hands of the manipulatively wealthy yet ruthlessly dishonest gambling industry. She has ignored ever-growing citizen concerns and a public whisper of “Thse damnable pokies should justbe banned” is getting very much louder! .
Her most noticeable ‘political crime’ to her people was to deny them the opportunity to speak effectively about the gambling reforms issue. She neither organized a balanced citizen awareness, education / information program so that confused citizens could know enough about the issue to make comment, to share thoughts and to form strong opinions based upon facts….but nor did she make her position crystal clear early enough to allow the public to be effective in bringing out the majority will. Consequently at the last minute after months of confusion, she finally announced that our parliament did not have the numbers to support the proposed reforms legislation, so she has shelved it. If citizens in democracies are meant to have sovereignty, they certainly are NOT empowered in Australia it seems. Modern governments can mess with the public head, so to speak. The majority will can be much silenced.
All that needs to happen for a politician to manipulate the citizen mind-set is to adhere to the following recipe. “First we will not tell them…second we will ignore their complaints if they do find out, third we will not give them a public platform to speak and form opinions…and fourth we will just say “Where is the evidence” or “Prove it” if their complaints get loud enough”!
Never before have I seen such evidence of irresponsibility in supposedly democratic government, when casino gambling, slots / pokies or gambling consumer safety issues are ever raised. Across the world, millions of citizens are NOT told basic truths about the dangerous consequences of casino gambling loss or causes of addiction. Our country [and yours] is meant to herald consumer safety, but our slots / pokies gamblers do not even get a casino spending record to warn them of budgetary blow-outs, let alone a gambling product that is fully “tried and tested” as safe for normal regular human use. Consumers are kept in the dark and receive no effective safety warnings about the gambling machines that they use. Product safety is presumed but not well tested, conveniently for government regulators.
In short our gambling consumers are not given the safety tools that they need to protect themselves and to make sound consumer decisions, to effectively avoid rampant personal casino gambling over-spending. Since other citizens are also so heavily impacted by these gambling harms indirectly, the clear solution would be to licence every casino gambler, to allow him to regulate his spending, to learn early the warning signs of addiction, to give his family the tools to prevent him from losing the family home! How I wish we had a Bill Kearney from Pennsylvania over here, or a Les Bernal from a source such as Stop Predatory Gambling! Yet our Australian public is still being told “Pokies are OK”!
I now see first hand how a government can create a ‘conspiracy of silence’ on purpose to confuse and silence a public upon any issue. It frightens me that despite our internet and effective new communication tools, that so many citizens can still be so manipulated. The governments can quell the masses enough to stop wholesale rebellion, simply by causing conflicting messages to be sent into the public arena. It has made me reflect upon the giant swindle that was the Wall Street 2008 crash, our European and American financial troubles, our politicians whom we supported. I cried tears of relief to hear President Obama’s victory speech…the “Yes we CAN” message that reverberated throughout the world!
Well now we see SO much evidence of “NO we CAN’T”…especially from politicians who frankly do worse than a volunteer school parents “Sausage Sizzle” fund-raising committee in ‘getting the word out’ and ‘getting the job done’! Yet we PAY these people to screw us?
When our researchers tell us that for every new slot machine, one more community job is lost; that for every slot machine almost one new addicted gambler is created; that for every person addicted to slots, around 10 innocent others are harmed; for every dollar earned by government by slots, $3 ends up being spent on fixing the social costs; for every casino job that is created…retail loses 3-4 workers. This research is alarming enough…but to NOT tell it loud and clear to citizens i na democracy is despicable!
I find it to be a crime against democracy that citizens across the world are still being told that “Casinos bring much-needed new jobs”; that casinos help communities to grow! That casino products are quite safe”. That is twisted information, a hotch-potch of half-truths and false information, when it is explained in full context…yet our global gambling industry has been allowed to profit on the suppression of real facts.
It is so much time now to think global…AND to act global! You wrote a very interesting post here, but now it is time for us all to work much more closely together to beat this citizen abuse that is happening all over our countries daily…as yet more and more people are told half-truths about slots / pokies! Sandy…it IS time for us all to join forces.
In 2014 in New Zealand there is a Problem Gambling Foundation conference as there will also be, in February 2012. I am attending that conference in New Zealand, but as an ex gambling addict who is not employed by any group who might pay my way there for me, I have used my own money in order to attend. It is ironic that I must do that…when these conferences should be providing for us and being much more supportive. The conferences invite us…but how do we get there?
Many other people with direct addiction experience who are possibly ‘experts’ by virtue of their own academic training…. but indeed ARE experts, based upon their direct experience of gambling harms, would obviously lack resources to attend these conferences. I am currently getting a ‘show of hands’ support base together, to ensure that consumer ‘experts on gambling addiction’ may be fully heard at these conferences. To get our voices heard, we have to first be able to pay for our conference attendance costs and that has silenced us in the past.
That is a most convenient position for shoddy governments to create, to ensure future silence, to allay public fears, simply because the government is NOT doing its own job in getting the word out in the first place! So instead we give our governments our blessing to use public taxpayer-funded money so that government-gagged addiction counselors, researchers employed by governments and industries to ‘create backing’ for political policies… and ‘cherry-picked’ community representatives…can all sit around chatting, being paid for attending a problem gambling conference that now is held usually in a CASINO… and we must silently watch them all getting nowhere about such an important social issue as gambling reform? Not any more!
Sandy please could you allow others to contact me if they would like to be part of a world push to give harmed casino gamblers a stronger louder voice, so that we can also get conference funding support from our relevant governments, that may bring added truth and expert insights about casino gambling, more effectively to the public forum?
Libby Mitchell, Victoria Australia
libby.mitch@gotalk.net.au
and please check our Facebook group, Gambling Action Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/gamblingactiongroup/
Comment by Libby Mitchell — January 22, 2012 @ 12:00 p01 |
Hi, Libby!
Thank you for the comment. It’s a reminder that what we’re dealing with is a global problem. Of course, I will share this with others.
Comment by Sandy Adell — January 22, 2012 @ 12:00 p01 |