wfn.org | Study exposes gambling addicts

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

June 21, 1999 News media contact: Linda Bloom*(212) 870-3803*New York
10-21-71B{340}

NOTE: This report may be used as a sidebar to UMNS story #339.

By United Methodist News Service

Is buying lottery tickets or plopping in front of a slot machine with a cup
full of quarters a harmless activity?

For many people, the answer is yes, according to a two-year study of the
social and economic impact of the gambling explosion across the United
States. But the National Gambling Impact Study Commission also found that
about 5.4 million adults and adolescents are addicted to the activity, and
more than 15 million are considered at risk for developing a gambling
problem.

"That's an epidemic out there," declared the Rev. Tom Grey, a United
Methodist pastor and executive director of the National Coalition Against
Organized Gambling. "It's a state-induced disease. It's the government's
dirty secret."

"The report uncovers the hidden epidemic of gambling addiction," said the
Rev. Thom White Wolf Fassett, top executive of the United Methodist Board of
Church and Society, in a prepared statement. 

"As we have seen, wherever gambling has gone, it has brought serious social
implications - addiction, crime, bankrupted businesses and broken families.
Gambling has been marketed as a painless revenue stream by politicians and a
harmless form of entertainment, like shopping or going to the movies, by
promoters. This report exposes gambling to be highly addictive." 

The United Methodist Social Principles encourage assistance for gambling
addicts. But Grey warned against accepting the argument of casino operators
that the role of churches is merely to care for the addicted.

"Churches ought to be saying, 'We don't want any more brokenness,'" he said.

A recent Supreme Court ruling striking down a 65-year-old ban on broadcast
advertising of casino gambling will increase the number of problem gamblers,
Grey predicted. "The more available you make gambling, the more accessible
you make it, the more the addiction rate goes up."

The United Methodist Church's Book of Discipline, which contains the Social
Principles and other guiding documents of the denomination, minces no words
in addressing gambling.

"Gambling is a menace to society, deadly to the best interests of moral,
social, economic and spiritual life, and destructive of good government,"
according to the book. "As an act of faith and concern, Christians should
abstain from gambling and should strive to minister to those victimized by
the practice. Where gambling has become addictive, the church will encourage
such individuals to receive therapeutic assistance so that the individual's
energies may be redirected into positive and constructive ends. The church
should promote standards and personal lifestyles that would make unnecessary
and undesirable the resort to commercial gambling - including public
lotteries - as a recreation, as an escape or as a means of producing public
revenue or funds for support of charities or government."

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