THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE: CYCLES AND REACTIONS IN GAMBLING POLICIES

Jim Orford (2005) rightly points out the close parallels between the story of British gambling policy and the story of British alcohol policy in the New Labour era. Also parallel is the fact that the government's proposed policy changes have run into a stormy reaction from an unusually broad political spectrum. While the main response to the opposition so far in the alcohol case has been diversionary tactics which characterize the issues in terms of individual ‘bad apples’ (whether sellers or customers) to be singled out for punishment, in the gambling case the government has pulled back from some of the most extreme aspects of its proposals for expanded gambling, as its bill became ‘enormously unpopular’ (Mathiason 2005). The British story of complicity between the government and gambling industry interests is a variation on a theme which will be familiar in a number of other countries. In some places, the problem is that the government has become dependent on gambling revenues. For one-fifth of US states, gambling revenues now account for close to or more than 10% of all their revenues. ‘We’re drunk on gambling revenue’, says the House majority leader in the Delaware legislature. While the emphasis is often put on the danger of addiction for individual gamblers, a state Senator from South Dakota noted that ‘the biggest addict turns out to be the state government that becomes dependent on it’ (Butterfield 2005). This does not mean that gambling and state interests always see to eye to eye, but it does give the gambling interests extraordinary bargaining power. Another variation is where the gambling interests are themselves governmental or semi-governmental. In Canada, casinos and lotteries are normally owned, and often run by, provincial agencies; in Ontario, for instance, the main agency is now the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, a merger of two previous government corporations. Unlike most government alcohol monopolies, gambling monopolies often take a singleminded view that their job is to maximize state revenue, without substantial regard to any resulting problems. Thus my experience a few years ago was that the Ontario government gambling corporations were a consistent voice in the councils of government for the idea that any gambling problems resulted from an individual character defect, and had nothing to do with the availability of opportunities to gamble. Unlike the situation Orford describes in the UK, there is an agency in Ontario—the Ministry of Health— clearly in charge of dealing with gambling problems treatment and research. But listserve discussions in 2004 revealed that those funded by it felt pressure to remain ‘gambling neutral’—e.g. to avoid a critical stance on the expansion of gambling. This constraint reflects the influence of the government gambling corporations. Thus in 1996, provincial gambling corporations made clear their extreme displeasure when Ministry of Health officials provided some bridge funding for a study of the effects among Niagara Falls community members of opening a casino (Room et al. 1999). The corporations were allergic to the idea that the availability of gambling might have something to do with the rate of gambling problems (as indeed it proved to have). The complicity often extends to relations between the gambling industry and gambling research. The main specific avenue of support in the USA for gambling research is the National Center for Responsible Gaming (NCRG), set up and supported by various components of the gambling industry (http://www.ncrg.org/fundingh/index.cfm). NCRG supports research at and through the Institute for Research on Pathological Gambling and Related Disorders (IRPGRD), part of the Division on Addictions at Harvard Medical School. IRPGRD's ‘philosophy’ is firmly focused on ‘pathological gambling’ (http://www.hms.harvard.edu/doa/institute/research.htm). To anyone familiar with the history of the alcohol field, the arrangements for gambling research in the USA today are reminiscent of those for the alcohol field in the 1940s and 1950s, when the alcohol industry and academic entrepreneurs seeking funding from it were able to reach an implicit agreement to limit the research focus to the causes of ‘alcoholism’, a mysterious disease confined to a small fraction of the population (Rubin 1979; Roizen 1991). For gambling, the equivalent fraction has been kept particularly small by increases in the threshold number of criteria required for the ‘pathological gambling’ diagnosis in the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association – from 3 in DSM-III to 4 in DSM-III-R and to 5 in DSM-IV. As Orford notes, not all countries are moving in the direction New Labour is taking Britain on gambling. Besides the examples he mentions, there are other instances of policymakers deciding that the availability and ease of gambling has been pushed too far. For instance, in the next couple of years, alterations will be made in the gambling machines (‘Jack Vegas’ machines) operated by the Swedish gambling monopoly to eliminate credit cards, slow down play and keep the player more in contact with time and place. In Norway, the number of gambling machines scattered through shopping centres is being halved and repositioned where age limits can be checked. On the other hand, the European Union's single-market fundamentalism is beginning to catch up with the area of gambling. The trend in European Court cases is towards restricting the conditions for operating government gambling monopolies such as, for instance, the UK National Lottery. British gambling companies have played an active role in efforts to open the Nordic gambling markets to competition. The rise of internet-based gambling is also undermining limits on gambling availability at the national level. As the gambling industry becomes increasingly globalized, any control efforts must also move to the international level if they are to be effective. Orford quotes Rose's paper (1991) on historical waves of repression and easy availability of gambling, usually as part of general waves of tightening and loosening of moral concerns (in the US, restrictive waves for gambling roughly correspond to temperance waves for alcohol – the 1820s and the early 1900s). More than for alcohol, Britain was swept up in the movement for prohibition of gambling, outlawing most forms of working-class betting for the first half of the 20th century (Dixon 1991). Orford notes that Rose's prediction that gambling will be outlawed again by 2029 seems unlikely now. But if governments continue along the path of complicity which regimes like New Labour have taken, we may well be doomed to repeat history's cycles, with an era of boom and bubble succeeded by an era of reaction and disgust. (all web references sighted on 3 April 2005)

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