wfn.org | The dice are loaded against gamblers, writer finds

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TITLE:The dice are loaded against gamblers, writer finds

Oct. 13, 1999 News media contact: Tim Tanton·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.
10-71B{536}

A UMNS News Feature
By Kevin Rippin*

I am not a gambler. 

I confess there is no particular moral reason for it. I'm just cheap. I
consider the dollars I earn to be too valuable to pour down the well-lit
hole of a slot machine. The chance of picking three numbers, in the right
order, out of a possible list of 1,000 or so, frazzles my mind. I like to
watch the horses run for the visceral beauty of the race, but not with my
money on their backs. 

The odds of winning at any type of gambling negates logic; the house
(casino, state, bookie) is set up to win. But gambling isn't about logic;
it's about hopes and dreams and the quick fix. This culture, through its
marketing and advertising, instills an idea that richer is better, money is
power, power is control. Gambling is one avenue to that equation. Why work
for a future when the roll of the dice or the spin of a wheel can bring
instantaneous rewards? 

Why slave at a job every day when a dollar bet at the lottery machine might
reap millions? Las Vegas and Atlantic City, with their glitz and their
monstrous cathedral-like casinos, stand as testaments to hope, and
shimmering evidence of what the money from losers has purchased.

There is no denying the rush of winning, the electric surge when a long-shot
horse gallops across the finish line. Or the sound of bells and whistles and
sirens when three sevens line up in the matrix of the slot machine. Or the
buzz when the daily number matches the number on the ticket held in the
fist. 

It's partly that physical rush, triggered by hope, that makes gambling
pleasurable, and for some, addictive. Gambling, like any drug, tickles the
brain, and the brain wants more. To deny that gambling feels good is to
never confront it as a problem. To blindly say it's evil is to dismiss what
causes the habit in the first place. 

The United Methodist Church is against gambling not because it's evil.
Rather, the evidence suggests that a concentration on gambling alone results
in an addiction that consumes money, time and productivity. 

Families are shattered by, and those beyond the gambler are often affected
by, a gambler's habits. The "I can do what I want as long as it doesn't hurt
anybody" dictum isn't valid for the gambler. Nobody lives in a vacuum.

I traveled to Cherokee, N.C., to experience a little of the gambling
ambiance at Harrah's casino. Who gambles there? Why do they gamble? Why
would they drive up a mountain to play the slot machines? Why would people
drive to Virginia or South Carolina for a lottery ticket? On my way to
Gatlinburg, Tenn., near Cherokee, I thought I'd stop and observe.
  
Cherokee is in the Smoky Mountains, north of Maggie Valley, about 20 miles
from Lake Junaluska, N.C., on land owned by Native Americans (that's another
issue, but not for this article). The drive up the mountain contains some of
the most picturesque scenery and landscapes in the United States, if the eye
can manage to ignore the kitschy junk dealers and flea markets and cheap
motels that line the two-lane road. The experience is a metaphor for what
gambling has done to the land.

The road directly outside Cherokee is dotted with campgrounds, motels and
churches, including a United Methodist church. They seem tiny and nebulous
in the shadow of the casino. 

Gambling is Cherokee's main industry, and Harrah's is there to make sure
gamblers enjoy every moment of their stay.
 
A shuttle bus awaits to usher prospective gamblers from distant parking lots
to the front door, where flashing lights and bells and whistles and
temperature-controlled atmosphere (chilly) mingles with a thin cloud of blue
cigarette smoke. It's a sensory assault meant to lead the gambler to a slot
machine via color and noise and a low continuous hum that suggests all
things, 
including winning, are possible and have already been arranged. 

It reminded me, on a larger scale, of what marketers do at a grocery store
with their brightly lit aisles and package displays and lulling elevator
music intended to attract the senses to a product. 

Dealers are a thing of the past at the casino of the new millennium. The
gambling here is absolutely virtual, computer driven. Thus, the odds are
more precise, the payouts more exact, the profit for the casino more
regulated. 

There are no clocks; time ceases to exist in this controlled environment.
The casino never closes, unlike most churches. Attendants circulate offering
free soft drinks and coffee. The lighting suggested dusk, twilight at a zoo.
The effect felt hypnotizing. Since virtually every need is provided, it is
not necessary to ever move from the chair attached to the machine. A gambler
never has to stop gambling.
 
My first impression was that there were no winners, no millionaires, in the
crowd. And it was crowded, unlike many churches. The slots were populated by
senior citizens, and they hardly looked rich, most dressed in low-end
polyesters and smoking bargain-basement cigarettes, mechanically pushing
slot machine buttons that had replaced one-armed bandits. 

A certain tinge of desperation, or at least painful intensity, seemed to
register on nearly every face. There weren't many smiles. Pleasure seemed a
secondary emotion; the casino was serious business. Also, as part of the
casino's virtual reality, many gamblers had their credit cards wired into
the machines, which functioned as anti-world ATMs. The virtual slot machines
took away money, and occasionally replaced it, making the action of actually
placing a coin in a machine (an act that requires thought) unnecessary. 

There were $10 machines, dollar machines, quarter machines, and tucked in
the back, a dozen nickel machines that were always occupied. Most people
seemed to be playing the Goldilocks quarter machines - not too much money at
one shot, not too little, just right. Occasionally there would be the
clang-clang-clang of winners cashing out, but on most of the machines, there
was the relentless whirl of the video screen and the even more relentless
pushing of buttons to start another game. Losers abounded.

I asked the attendant at the buffet ($12.99 a pop - so much for cheap food
in this casino) why she thought there was such an inordinately large number
of senior citizens in Harrah's.
 
She answered, "Boredom." 

The players looked uniformly bored. An elderly gentleman I passed hit on the
dollar slots for $500. His expression did not register the "joy of winning."
Rather, he seemed to be grimacing, a tad pixilated inside the pupils. 

At another machine, a woman who had plugged in her credit card won $500. Her
lack of joy was understandable when she said to her friend, "Well, I got
back five hundred of the eleven hundred I'm down."

I couldn't conceive of throwing that much money at a whim. 

The casino experience was exhausting - the stimuli, the clatter, the sheer
industry of the planning that went into constructing walls and all that
transpired inside them. I chose to walk, rather than ride the shuttle, to my
car, so that I could breathe real air and spread out, so that I wouldn't be
contained, at least for 15 minutes, inside of a machine, serving as both 
its fuel and its passenger.

A brochure detailing the secular evils of gambling is available at Harrah's.
Entitled, Know When to Stop Before You Start, it's the casino's guide to
"responsible gaming," which is akin to Budweiser's caution of "Don't drink
and drive." A series of 20 questions are asked within the brochure, and,
according to the writers of the brochure, readers who answer seven correct
probably have a gambling problem. The questions are essentially those that
one might ask a potential drug addict or alcoholic, questions like: Do you
lose time from work due to gambling? Is gambling making your home life
unhappy? Is gambling affecting your reputation? Does gambling make you
careless for the welfare of your family? etc. I got the sense that Harrah's 
didn't really mean it, since, from their perspective, to stop gambling meant
that they'd lose money.

The United Methodist position against gambling is strongly worded and clear.
The 1996 Book Of Discipline, Paragraph 67G, instructs that, "Gambling is a
menace to society, deadly in the best interests of moral, social, economical
and spiritual life, and destructive of good government....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."

The position of the church is clear: Don't gamble. Unstated reasons are the
20 questions asked in the pseudo-caring brochure handed out at Harrah's,
reasons at the root of behaviors that affect spiritual health. 

Hundreds of thousands of people spend their rent money on lottery tickets
every week. The light bill money is bingo seed cash. The electric bill money
goes in the slot machines. The pension check gets signed over to bet on
Revelation in the sixth race.

The lottery, the particular gambling hot button for United Methodists in
North Carolina, is geared to attract lower middle class and lower economic
class clientele - those who can least afford it. The governments in states
that have legalized the lottery claim they are putting the profits to good
use for senior citizens, roads, schools, etc. Again, it's another devil's
bargain. The 
cash for those endeavors is coming from lottery contributions by those who
can afford it least. It's like a tricked-up voluntary tax on the poor who
contribute without volunteering. 

The same universal observation holds true for all gambling, no matter what
the form. The fact is this: if the lottery in specific, and gambling in
general, was a good bet, wouldn't bankers be standing in line at the
Mini-mart to buy a Lotto ticket every night? Wouldn't doctors or lawyers be
hunched over a beer at the OTB parlor every weekend?

The same senses that gambling assaults and seduces can be used to step back
and watch the literal house of cards that is used to construct a
rationalization for the habit. Underneath the glitzy surfaces, there is the
faint odor of rot. 

The odds are stacked. 

In the end, nobody wins but the house.
# # #
*Rippin is editor of the North Carolina Christian Advocate newspaper. This
story originally appeared there.

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
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