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New study shows 1 in 25 deaths worldwide attributable to alcohol
New study shows 1 in 25 deaths worldwide attributable to alcohol, but CAMH researcher sees glass as half full
For Release: June 26, 2009, (Toronto) Research from Canada’s own Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) featured in this week’s edition of The Lancet (PDF) shows that worldwide, 1 in 25 deaths are directly attributable to alcohol consumption. This rise since 2000 is mainly due to increases in the number of women drinking.
CAMH’s Dr Jürgen Rehm and his colleagues found that alcohol-attributable disorders are among the most disabling disease categories within the global burden of disease, especially for men. And in contrast to other traditional risk factors for disease, the burden attributable to alcohol lies more with younger people than with the older population.
Dr. Rehm still takes an optimistic ‘glass half full’ response to this large and increasing alcohol-attributable burden. “Today, we know more than ever about which strategies can effectively and cost-effectively control alcohol-related harms,” Dr. Rehm said today. “Provided that our public policy makers act on these practical strategies expeditiously, we could see an enormous impact in reducing damage.”
The study showed that Europe had a high proportion of deaths related to alcohol, with 1 in 10 deaths directly attributable (up to 15% in the former Soviet Union). Average alcohol consumption in Europe in the adult population is somewhat higher than in North America: 13 standard drinks per person per week (1 standard drink = 13.6 grams of pure ethanol and corresponds to a can of beer, one glass or wine and one shot of spirits) compared to North America’s 10 to 11 standard drinks. The recent Canadian consumption rate is equivalent of almost 9 standard drinks per person per week age 15 plus, and has been going up, as has high risk drinking. Globally, the average is around 7 standard drinks per person per week (despite the fact that most of the adult population worldwide actually abstains from drinking alcohol).
Most of the deaths caused by alcohol were through injuries, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and liver cirrhosis.
“Globally, the effect of alcohol on burden of disease is about the same size as that of smoking in 2000, but it is relatively greatest in emerging economies. Global consumption is increasing, especially in the most populous countries of India and China.”
CAMH is known for its pioneering research in the most effective ways of reducing the burden of alcohol. For example, CAMH endorsed the legislative change implemented this year requiring young Ontario drivers to maintain a 0% blood alcohol content; in many jurisdictions this measure has reduced alcohol-related crashes and saved lives.
Other evidence-based policies proven to reduce harms include better controls on access to alcohol through pricing interventions and outlet density restrictions as well as more focused strategies such as violence reduction programs in licensed premises. Within health care, provision of screening and brief interventions for high risk drinkers has enormous potential to reduce the contribution of alcohol to the onset of cancer and other chronic diseases.
“There are significant social, health and economic problems caused by alcohol,” said Gail Czukar, CAMH’s executive vice-president, Policy, Education and Health Promotion. “But research gives us sound, proven interventions that governments and health providers can use to address these problems.”
To arrange an interview please contact Kirk LeMessurier, CAMH Media Relations, at 416 595 6015 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 416 595 6015end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) is Canada's largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital, as well as one of the world's leading research centres in the area of addiction and mental health. CAMH combines clinical care, research, education, policy development, prevention and health promotion to help transform the lives of people affected by mental health and addiction issues.
Internet gambling—illegal in the United States—suffered a serious blow in June as long-delayed regulations to put the squeeze on industry profiteers and consumers evading the law finally took force. The regulations are the cornerstone of a 2006 law to block U.S.-based customer transactions to offshore online gambling merchants, thereby slowing cash flow offshore to a trickle. The plan is working.
Yet some in Washington are already plotting its undoing. Congress is considering legislation that not only would repeal the law that authorized the new regulations but also would leap a frightful step further—legalize Internet gambling. The Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act (H.R. 2267) sailed through the House Financial Services Committee last week in a 41-22 vote. Seven Republicans gave their approval, while four Democrats held the line in opposition.
To see how all members of the Financial Services Committee voted on H.R. 2267, click here (32 KB PDF).
Committee chairman Barney Frank’s (D-MA) bill would effectively repeal the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which passed by wide margins as part of a broader bill in the waning hours of Congress in 2006—409 to 2 in the House and with no objections in the Senate. The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission ardently supported the bill.
UIGEA puts enforcement teeth to the industry that was banned under a 1961 law on wireless communication, long before the advent of the Internet. Under regulations based on the law, banks and other financial institutions are now supposed to have in place tools to block transactions between U.S.-based customer accounts and offshore gambling merchants. Those efforts would unravel under the Frank bill.
But Rep. Frank and cohorts are not interested merely in legalizing and regulating online gambling, the twin pillars of his bill. They are hoping the government will cash in with a slice of the multi-billion-dollar pie. For this reason, the Frank bill by itself serves the government minimal interest. It is only part one of a two-part act.
Act two is taxation. This is accomplished through a second bill, H.R. 4976. When Congress reconvenes in September, the House Ways and Means Committee is expected to take up committee chairman Jim McDermott’s (D-WA) bill that would tax online gambling, giving the debt-laden government—$13 trillion in the red and counting—more of Americans’ dollars to fritter away.
Their defense is simple. As long as the government keeps a watchful eye on the offshore online gambling sites, and as long as the federal coffers are swimming in a new revenue stream, then the industry is basically harmless, perhaps even good for society. But this rationalization is unfounded.
Legalizing online gambling is a predictable wager. As evidenced by countless sad testimonials, the ease and addictive power of point-and-click gambling from the privacy of a personal computer all too often yields financial ruin and broken families. Rolling the dice on Internet gambling is no game. Putting the government’s pocket book ahead of the American people’s best interests is always a losing wager. The 41 representatives who voted last week in committee to overturn the 2006 tough-on-illegal-gambling law should be held to account.
If you agree, please tell your representative that you oppose the Frank bill (H.R. 2267), the McDermott bill (H.R. 4976), and any other legislation to legalize online gambling.
To see how all members of the Financial Services Committee voted on H.R. 2267, click here (32 KB PDF).
Ron Bogle is a retired Superior Court Judge from North Carolina who recently published a column in The Herald Sun about the debate on lowering the national drinking age. Bogle provided a brief history of the 21 law as well as the recent movement to lower the drinking age led by John McCardell, currently university president in Tennessee. As Bogle’s column described, McCardell is a frequent speaker for the alcohol industry who continues to call for lowering the drinking age to 18.
The movement initiated by McCardell has actually resulted in a national discussion about the 21 law, which is probably not exactly what he intended. That’s because there is now an overwhelming amount of evidence that shows the 21 law has reduced underage drinking and saved thousands of lives. As Bogle wrote in his column: “With current medical research confirming the health dangers of teen drinking and more supportive of continuation of current law, most prevention advocates wanted this forum to inform the nation about the health, safety and behavioral realities associated with teen drinking. With those facts in his way, McCardell seems no longer interested in a national conversation.”
However, the 21 law is no longer just a national conversation here in the U.S. – it’s becoming a global discussion. This is especially ironic since McCardell and others who promote a lower drinking age often point to Europe as a model, arguing that a lower legal drinking age takes the mystery out of drinking and promotes more moderate drinking habits. The problem with this argument is that the facts show otherwise.
For example, consider what’s happening in the United Kingdom, where the legal drinking age is 18. In the U.K. Daily Mail, one British journalist recently wrote an article about returning to his home country after a lengthy assignment in the U.S. “I wasn’t expecting life in Britain to be easy to get used to again,” he wrote. “But nothing prepared me for the booze. Sometimes it seems as if everyone here is drunk.” He went on to write that drinking in English cities has led to increased crime and unsafe streets, even in small towns. “It still annoys me that my mum, during the last few years of her life, could not walk the streets of the city of Bath at night,” he wrote. “Bath, of all places! Hardly the roughest of English cities. But, at night, it was infested with enough drink-fuelled yobbishness to make it unsafe for frail folk to walk home from the cinema.”
In Scotland, the drinking culture is even worse. On average, adults in Scotland consume the equivalent of 46 bottles of vodka every year – or 12.2 liters of pure alcohol for every person over the age of 18. The number of alcohol-related deaths in Scotland has doubled in 10 years, and the country has one of the world’s fastest growing rates of alcohol-induced illnesses such as cirrhosis and chronic liver disease, according to the Scottish government. In 2008, the government published a report recommending a variety of actions to reduce the country’s alcohol problems, including raising the legal purchase age from 18 to 21 for off-premise purchases of alcohol.
The drinking age debate is also taking place in New Zealand, where the Law Commission issued a report in April 2010, calling on the government to raise the drinking age to 20. New Zealand’s legal drinking age was lowered to 18 from age 20 in 1989 – and binge drinking has steadily increased since then. The country’s alcohol-related car crashes and crime problems are increasing dramatically, with police now calling for action to raise the legal drinking age and certain communities enacting their own regulations to curb drinking-related problems.
Clearly, the facts from the United Kingdom and New Zealand show that lowering the legal drinking age does not promote a culture of moderation – in fact, research shows that lowering the drinking age increases alcohol-related harms across the board and affects kids at ever-younger ages.
As the debate continues about the legal drinking age in the U.S. and around the world, it is important to recognize arguments based on myth and learn the facts. See www.why21.org to learn more. As Ron Bogle has shown by example in his recent column, arm yourself with facts – and keep the conversation going in the right direction.
Sources:
“After a decade in sober America… is everyone in Britain drunk?” by Justin Webb, U.K. Daily Mail, July 8, 2010.
“Last call for move to lower drinking age to 18,” by Ron Bogle, The Herald Sun, July 2, 2010.
“Return the drinking age to 20 – Law Commission,” by Tracy Watkins. www.stuff.co.nz, April 27, 2010.
“The statistics are clear: Higher age saves lives,” Associated Press, September 14, 2008.
“Changing Scotland’s relationship with alcohol: A discussion paper on our strategic approach,” The Scottish Government, June 2008.
Should Internet Gambling Be Legalized?
[NOTE: The following article is a New York Times op-ed by Les Bernal, Executive Director of Stop Predatory Gambling, a national organization with which ALCAP is associated.]
The potential boon for cash-strapped states versus the social costs associated with addiction.
A Predatory Business
July 29, 2010
Les Bernal is the executive director of Stop Predatory Gambling, a nonprofit group that is against casinos and state lotteries.
Allowing Internet gambling is like opening a Las Vegas casino in every house, apartment and dorm room in America.
It is totally different from social gambling like playing cards at the kitchen table or buying a square in the Super Bowl office pool. Instead, it represents one of the purest forms of predatory gambling, which is the practice of using gambling to prey on human weakness for profit.
What makes it predatory compared to a kitchen table poker game? The speed of the game, the frequency of play (gambling operators allow users to play multiple games at once), the intensity of the high or buzz people get when they play and the enormous amount of money people lose, all of which goes down 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is the equivalent of opening a Las Vegas casino in every house, apartment and dorm room in America.
Gambling operators say these facts justify why we need to “regulate” predatory Internet gambling. Yet casinos like Harrah’s make 90 percent of its gambling profits from the financial losses of 10 percent of its visitors, according to Christina Binkley’s book, “Winner Takes All.’’ The obvious question is this: How do you regulate a business in which nearly all its profits are based on people who are addicted and out of control?
You can’t. Which is why the business model for predatory Internet gambling (and for land-based casinos and state lotteries as well) only works if our government, in its role as regulator and promoter, takes away the freedom of millions of Americans. By definition, someone who is an addict is not free. They have lost their free will and their freedom to choose.
The issue is not whether citizens are free to gamble. The issue is whether billion-dollar gambling interests, in partnership with our government, can use predatory gambling to take away the freedom of millions of citizens.
Teaching children to drink sensibly may not be sensible
The idea that parents can prevent alcohol misuse in their children by teaching them to drink responsibly at home is a popular one in many parts of Europe and elsewhere. But it may owe more to folk lore than to science, according to a new study in the January 2010 issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
In a study of 428 Dutch families, researchers found that the more teenagers were allowed to drink at home, the more they drank outside of home as well. What is more, teenagers who drank under their parents’ watch or on their own had an elevated risk of developing alcohol-related problems. Drinking problems included trouble with school work, missed school days and getting into fights with other people, among other issues.
The findings, say the researchers, put into question the advice of some experts who recommend that parents drink with their teenage children to teach them how to drink responsibly -- with the aim of limiting their drinking outside of the home.
That advice is common in the Netherlands, where the study was conducted, but it is based more on experts’ reasoning than on scientific evidence, according to Dr Haske van der Vorst, the lead researcher on the study.
“The idea is generally based on common sense,” said van der Vorst, of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. “For example, the thinking is that if parents show good behavior -- here, moderate drinking -- then the child will copy it. Another assumption is that parents can control their child’s drinking by drinking with the child.”
But the current findings suggest that is not the case. Based on this and earlier studies, van der Vorst says, “I would advise parents to prohibit their child from drinking, in any setting or on any occasion.”
The study included 428 families with two children between the ages of 13 and 15. Parents and teens completed questionnaires on drinking habits at the outset and again one and two years later.
College Drinking - Who's Problem Is It?
At the American College Health Association’s annual meeting held in June this year, one college health official gave a speech on student alcohol abuse with a frank and peculiar conclusion that colleges simply can’t do anything to stop it.
That’s the gist of a presentation given by Edward Ehlinger, director and chief health officer of Boynton Health Services at the University of Minnesota. As reported in USA Today, Ehlinger spoke at the meeting about alcohol as a problem for society, not for colleges. “I don’t think the problem of alcohol is an underage problem,” he said. “It is not a college or university problem. I think alcohol is a community problem – it is a societal problem. We need to be humble about the fact we don’t know what the heck we’re doing and we need to do something different.”
Ehlinger’s comments would seem to support efforts by groups like the Amethyst Initiative and the National Social Norms Institute at the University of Virginia that advocate for lowering the U.S. legal drinking age to 18, as if legalizing drinking for 18- to 20-year-olds will suddenly make underage alcohol problems go away. What Ehlinger and these groups ignore, however, is the solid science about the biological effects of alcohol on young people’s health, causing lasting damage to the liver, brain and nervous system, not to mention the escalated risk of accidental injury and death. And as the USA Today article points out, Ehlinger did not explain why colleges frequently work with local governments and businesses to fight other health problems such as H1N1, meningitis and tobacco use, but have yet to address alcohol as a health priority.
In fairness to Ehlinger, his presentation also called for more leadership from college presidents in battling underage drinking on campus, especially public university presidents. “We have let our college presidents off the hook,” he said. “It’s a responsibility that my university president has… to meet with the governor, the state legislature and other government officials to say, ‘this is a problem.’”
While Ehlinger’s point may be well taken that underage drinking is a societal problem, he fails to admit that colleges are part of society too. Underage drinking is a difficult problem, but that should not and does not allow colleges to simply shrug off the responsibility of enforcing laws and protecting student health. For more information about the 21 law and other controversial alcohol topics, visit the new FACE website at faceproject.org.
Source:
“Campus drinking: colleges’ problem or society’s?,” USA Today, June 4, 2010.
Nevada Leads Nation in Unemployment Rates
Christian Science Monitor June 21, 2010
For the first time in four years, Michigan does NOT have the highest unemployment rate in the United States. That dubious distinction now belongs to Nevada.
Unemployment at 13.6 percent is nothing to brag about, but it's better than the 14 percent in Nevada, the new No. 1 in unemployment among the states. And the trends don't look so good in Nevada.
Its labor force has been shrinking, which usually helps suppress official unemployment counts. Nevertheless, unemployment shot up compared with 13.7 percent in April.
One reason for the difference is that manufacturing tends to recover early after a recession, while services (like Nevada's big tourism and hospitality industries [a.k.a. "casino gambling enterprise"]) tend to recover later.
Nevada holds one other dubious title among the states: It has the nation's highest foreclosure rate.
Study Shows Drinking on the Rise Among Teens
06/08/10
After making great strides in previous decades, one study shows that teen drinking is now on the rise. The study was conducted by the Partnership for a Drug Free America among 9-12 grade students in 2009 and was released in March this year. The study’s results showed a considerable increase in students who admitted to drinking in the past month – up to 39 percent or 6.5 million students. In 2008, the number of students who reported drinking over the past month was 35 percent, or 5.8 million teens.
One newspaper in New Jersey reported on and confirmed the study’s results at local high schools such as Holmdel High School, where teachers and counselors are not surprised by the increase in drug and alcohol use in teens.
Jon Gaspich, a student assistance counselor in New Jersey’s Toms River Regional Schools District, commented on the study and his own experience in an article published in the Asbury Park Press. “Prevention and intervention were very strong in the late 1980s through the ‘90s, resulting in great strides against teen drug and alcohol use,” he said. “However in the past decade, prevention hit a plateau, and the state as a whole was riding off the efforts of the previous decades, rather than doing anything new…. Now, we’re going to see a rebound.”
Gaspich went on to say that one of the biggest problems in fighting underage drinking is that many parents downplay the dangers of alcohol versus drugs – an attitude that “it’s only alcohol.” But statistics show that alcohol is the leading cause of death among young people – a fact that needs to be communicated early and often to teens and parents.
Also noted in the article was the work of the Holmdel Youth Alliance in New Jersey, a group of concerned teens who give presentations to middle schools students to build alcohol awareness and promote a drug- and alcohol-free lifestyle. The group admits that the work is challenging, but they’re enthusiastic about showing younger kids that not all teens are drinking or using drugs. Alliance member Austin Guiarino, age 16, was quoted in the article as saying, “We hope younger kids will see that there’s a group of kids who don’t do drugs and they will think, ‘if they can do it, maybe I can too.’”
Source:
“Study: More teens turn to drugs, alcohol,” app.com, May 16, 2010.
San Bernardino Bans Single Beer Sales in Response to Study
06/08/10
On May 3, 2010, the city of San Bernardino, California, banned single sales of beer and other alcohol products, partly in response to a research project that shows a definite link between alcohol and crime.
As reported in the San Bernardino County Sun, research conducted by Professor Robert Nash Parker at the University of California Riverside was a significant factor in the City Council’s decision. The San Bernardino County Public Health Department assisted Professor Parker in the study, which analyzed city crime data and alcohol outlets selling single-serve size beer and malt liquor. The study concluded that areas with a high availability of single-serving beer and alcoholic beverages were more likely to have higher rates of crime and violence.
In the research project’s final report, professor Park wrote, “We would expect that if alcohol from single serve containers is being immediately consumed, rates of violence would tend to be higher around retailers with higher percentages of cooler space devoted to these products.” The research findings as well as other factors reported by law enforcement prompted the San Bernardino City Council members to pass the new law banning single serve beer sales as an “urgency ordinance,” meaning it went into effect immediately. The measure also includes new penalties for alcohol sellers in the city who fail to control other public nuisances such as graffiti and loitering around their stores.
Although alcohol laws are usually determined by state government, city officials in San Bernardino see this measure as an important way to hold liquor stores accountable – while also helping to control crime and protect public health.
Source:
“Study inspires San Bernardino beer ban,” San Bernardino County Sun, May 12, 2010.
Geneva voters decided overwhelmingly Tuesday to allow the sale of alcohol within the city limits.
With 946 supporting the sale of alcohol in the city and 498 opposing it, Geneva Mayor Wynnton Melton said the message was clear.
“I’m shocked, to tell you the truth. I’m not shocked at all that it went wet, but I’m shocked at the margin of victory and voter participation in a one-issue election,” Melton said. “The numbers are almost at a two-to-one ratio. It’s a very distinct message sent to the leadership of the City of Geneva that people feel strongly about this.”
The vote will have some tangible benefits for the town.
With the additional money from taxes and licenses, Melton estimated the city will see between $50,000 and $100,000 of additional annual revenue.
Dothan's Country Crossing bingo casino decides not to reopen
(Press-Register/Bill Starling)Country Crossing owner Ronnie Gilley, seen here on Tuesday Nov. 17, 2009, says he has considered reopening Country Crossing's electronic bingo casino on Thursday but decided against it.
DOTHAN -- The developer of the Country Crossing electronic bingo development in Dothan says he won't reopen immediately.
Country Crossing's casino, restaurants and inn have been closed since late January to prevent a raid by the task force.
Alcohol and Gambling Often Go Together for a Reason!
Watanabe restates his casino losses
OMAHA WORLD-HERALD MAY 22, 2010
Terry Watanabe has given new heft to his unofficial title as Vegas' biggest loser.
Watanabe alleges in his latest court filings that in a single year he gambled away $189 million — an average of more than a half-million dollars a day — at two Las Vegas casinos owned by Harrah's Entertainment Inc.
His total losses over a two-year period hit $200 million, said Pierce O'Donnell, his attorney from Los Angeles.
Watanabe, a former Omaha businessman, is embroiled in a dispute with Harrah's on several legal fronts. He is believed to be one of Vegas' all-time biggest “whales” — the name used for high-rolling gamblers.
Watanabe faces criminal charges for allegedly skipping out on $14.7 million owed to Harrah's. And, in rebuttal, Watanabe filed a civil complaint alleging that Harrah's took advantage of his gambling addiction and allowed him to gamble when drunk.
In earlier court filings, Watanabe had reported $112 million in gambling losses in 2007. He upped that number last week in his civil complaint against Harrah's after receiving more information from the casino, his lawyer said.
“It's an incomprehensible number. He was very, very ill at the time, and Harrah's took advantage of his vulnerability,” said O'Donnell.
Gary Thompson, a spokesman for Harrah's, questioned whether Watanabe lost $189 million in one year or whether he took out “markers” that he never used to gamble. He also said Watanabe's civil complaint and other allegations were an effort to “divert attention” from his criminal case.
“It's not going to change the fact he owes us money,” said Thompson.
Watanabe, 52, is the former owner of the Oriental Trading Co. of Omaha. He claims to have embarked on a compulsive gambling binge in 2007, during which he lived at Caesars Palace for six months.
His gambling woes came to light last year when county attorneys in Las Vegas brought felony charges against him in Clark County District Court, alleging he skipped out on money owed to Caesars Palace and the Rio.
Harrah's owns both. His trial is set for July 12.
O'Donnell met last month with the lead prosecutor in the case, Bernie Zadrowski. He said he supplied information to Zadrowski in an effort to get the case dismissed. Zadrowski has said he would review the information, as he would in any case.
In addition, Watanabe has filed a complaint with the Nevada Gaming Control Board, alleging Harrah's violated its policy of allowing a visibly intoxicated person to gamble. Harrah's has denied the allegation.
Thompson said the casino company is confident that when the board finishes its investigation, it will find that Harrah's acted “appropriately” in its dealings with Watanabe.
Andy Rooney segment on 60 Minutes, May 16, 2010:
“I have good news for you tonight. According to an American Gaming Association report, revenue from casino gambling fell by almost two billion dollars last year.
A lot of people are out of work and it turns out that when people are unemployed, they gamble less. You'd think they might gamble more but they don't. There's some good things about everything, I guess.
In 2008 the casinos earned $32.5 billion. Last year they earned only $30.7 billion. I use the words "earned" and "only" loosely but casino income was down a lousy little two billion dollars last year. It's enough to bring tears to your eyes.
It's a law for people to protect themselves by wearing seat belts for their own safety when they're in car. How come the government doesn't protect citizens from losing their money by making gambling in casinos illegal? There should be a sign in front of every casino that says "enter at your own risk...of losing your shirt."
The thing that bothers me most about gambling is that people fritter away money so they don't get to spend it on things that someone else has been paid to produce. Gambling produces nothing.
There's only so much money in the world and if it's lost at a gambling table, it's money that isn't spent on things America makes. I mean who's best for this country - a machinist at an automobile plant in Detroit or a blackjack dealer in Las Vegas?
The gambling casinos keep something like 20 percent of everything bet for themselves, so there's no chance of anyone but the casinos winning over a period of time. They make billions - and where do the billions come from? They come from all of us because we're the losers. I mean, suckers is what we are.
If I write as though I was above all this, I'm not writing right. I've gambled half a dozen times in Las Vegas and even though I know how dumb it is. I think I can win. I've never won but that doesn't stop me from thinking "maybe next time."”
Chips are down for US casinos as revenues slide
by Bob Lever (AFP) 3/7/10
WASHINGTON — US casinos have run into a string of bad luck as the recession and other factors cut into gambling revenues, even as more states move to get a piece of the action.
Gaming revenues in the 12 US states authorizing casinos fell 5.7 percent in 2009 to 30.7 billion dollars, according to a preliminary estimate by the American Gaming Association, a trade group.
This followed a 4.6 percent drop in 2008 gross gaming receipts, the figures showed.
Gaming industry analysts say the recession has hit gambling along with all other consumer and leisure activities.
But some say other factors are hurting casinos, including new entertainment offerings such as Internet gambling, which is illegal in the United States but according to some surveys is still widely practiced.
A study by market research firm Mintel showed that 30 percent of adults visited a casino in the past year, down from 35 percent in 2001 -- a 14 percent decline.
"This shift has been gradual, which suggests that this is not a result of the recession," said Billy Hulkower, a Mintel senior analyst.
Hulkower said the trend suggests little or no growth in casino attendance over the past decade, a period that included two recessions and an economic upturn. This means economics is not the only factor, he said.
"Casinos may be losing audience to the increasingly compelling entertainment offerings in the home; such as HDTV (high definition TV), high-end video game systems and the Internet, including Internet gambling," he said.
Of those who did visit a casino in the last 12 months, 27 percent were Indian reservation casinos, followed by 24 percent in Las Vegas and 12 percent in Atlantic City, Mintel found.
AGA spokeswoman Holly Thomsen said the industry's own surveys show steady or slightly rising casino attendance, even if gamblers are betting less.
"Our industry has been impacted by the recession like most other consumer-discretionary reliant industries," she said.
"We know that people are watching their entertainment spending more in the tight economy."
Thomsen said the worst hit by the sour economy were "destination" areas such as Las Vegas, Nevada, and Atlantic City, New Jersey, with some gamblers choosing casinos closer to home.
In Nevada, the major casinos lost nearly 6.8 billion dollars in gaming activity in the fiscal year to June 30, the latest for which data is available. Revenues for the state's casinos doing more than one million dollars in business fell 12.6 percent in the period, according to the state gaming commission.
Atlantic City gambling revenue for the city's 11 casinos in 2009 was at its lowest in more than a decade.
The hard luck for casinos also means woes for states depending on gaming revenues for education, health care and other general government needs.
New Jersey figures show casino revenues for January fell 8.5 percent from the same month a year ago to 294.2 million dollars.
Twelve states currently authorize casino gambling, but Mintel notes that at least 25 states have proposed or are considering expanding gambling operations including lotteries and sports betting to help balance their budgets.
"If a whole lot of states are suddenly starting to allow gambling and were counting on this revenue you're going to have a problem," Hulkower said.
A survey by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, meanwhile, said state and local government tax revenues from authorized gambling operations excluding tribal casinos declined by 2.6 percent in the fiscal year 2009, marking the first time those revenues have declined in over three decades.
"The expansion of gambling does not bring more customers into the market," said Lucy Dadayan, a senior analyst at the Rockefeller Institute.
"There are only so many customers, so with every new casino there are only marginal increases."
Although the economy is showing signs of reviving, casinos are still struggling, based on tax receipts, said Dadayan, who calculated a decline of five to six percent in state revenues for the July-December period.
"The overall trend for the state tax collections from casinos... is still downward," she said.
CASINO BOSS ADMITS ORDERING INVESTIGATION OF OPPONENTS
"Sounds Like Something Straight Out of a Mob Movie"
MONTGOMERY, AL - Eric Johnston, president of Citizens for a Better Alabama made the following statement today:
"So if you've ever wondered what a casino mogul does with the millions he's made off Alabamians who lost their hard-earned money at his casino, now you know."
"In an article appearing in today's edition of the Mobile Press-Register, casino boss Milton McGregor admits he hired a private eye to follow a law enforcement official who disagreed with him about gambling in Alabama. McGregor then claims he threatened to expose him, if the Governor did not. That sounds like something straight out of a mob movie."
"Alabamians should pay attention to this. The evidence that casinos and gambling bring increased crime and corruption is indisputable. Milton McGregor has just helped prove that point with his claim that he would use such information to intimidate people."
# # #
House committee approves gambling bill
By George Altman
January 21, 2010, 8:30AM
Mobile Press-Register photo: Visitors to the Wind Creek Casino in Atmore play some of the electronic bingo machines at the facility, which is owned by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. A bill in the Alabama Legislature would allow state-regulated facilities to offer the same games that are offered at Indian casinos.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- A bill that would allow state-regulated casinos to offer the same games as Indian casinos, as well as shield cruise ship casinos from gambling raids, passed a House committee on Wednesday.
The approval, on a voice vote, followed hours of discussion before the House Tourism and Travel Committee, mostly by members of the public. State House security estimated that 450 to 500 people came to see the first vote on a gambling bill in the 2010 legislative session.
Among them were several representatives of Country Crossing, a new gambling and country music venue that has been targeted by Republican Gov. Bob Riley, as well as a handful of cruise industry officials.
"I think the music industry, and I think the cruise-line industry, is critical to the development of the tourism industry in our state," said Rep. Johnny Mack Morrow, D-Red Bay and the committee chairman. "It's very important, from the standpoint of tourism, that we pass this legislation."
Opponents argued that cruise ships are in no real danger of being raided, and that gambling is an economic drain. Joe Godfrey, executive director of the faith-based Alabama Citizens Action Program, said casinos are "preying upon the weakness" of Alabamians.
"This bill will just expand their predatory practices," he said. "It's not the cash cow that everybody says, and it's money that comes from the losers."
For more than a year, officials under Riley's direction have cracked down on gambling across the state. The action has been focused on controversial gambling machines that look and play much like illegal slots but pick winners through fast, computerized games of bingo, a game that is allowed in parts of Alabama.
The bill's sponsor, Rep. Marcel Black, D-Tuscumbia, said it is meant as a stopgap measure to protect casinos and cruise ships from further raids by Riley's antigambling task force. As such, all of the bill's provisions will expire in early November, by which time Black hopes to have enacted a broader constitutional amendment on gambling.
Black's bill would allow casinos like VictoryLand in Macon County and Country Crossing in Houston County to offer the same types of games permitted for Atmore's Wind Creek Casino & Hotel.
As an Indian casino run by Poarch Creek Indian Gaming, Wind Creek is governed by federal, rather than state, rules and officials. State-regulated casinos have long expressed concerns that Indian casinos could gain an advantage as a result of state crackdowns.
The measure gained bipartisan support Wednesday, with Rep. Warren Beck, R-Geneva, speaking in favor of it. While Democrats were largely behind Black's bill, some expressed concern that it restricted new casinos from opening in their districts. Black said he would work to address that issue in coming weeks.
Maritime protections were added to the bill after Morrow sent letters to dozens of officials last week expressing concern that cruise ships, as well as ships with casinos being repaired in Mobile shipyards, could be in violation of state law.
Riley's office said Wednesday that the protections are not necessary, as federal law already prevents raids on such vessels. Spokesman Jeff Emerson said that expressing fear over possible raids is a "red herring" to help pass a bill under which "cruises to nowhere would be allowed to conduct full-scale casino gambling, including card and table games and slot machines."
Leon Maisel, president of the Mobile Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau, told the committee that the issue puts Alabama's reputation as a cruise hub at stake.
"Gaming is part of the cruise industry. It needs to be protected by the state," Maisel said.
Gov. Bob Riley asks Alabama Supreme Court to declare all electronic bingo illegal
Riley: Machines are illegal
Friday, October 23, 2009
KIM CHANDLER
Birmingham News staff writer
MONTGOMERY - Gov. Bob Riley said Thursday he has urged the Alabama Supreme Court to rule that the slots look-alike game of electronic bingo is illegal across the state.
Riley and St. Clair District Attorney Richard Minor filed a joint brief with the court earlier this month asking the court to issue a ruling in a St. Clair County bingo case that declares all of the machines illegal.
The Alabama Supreme Court in June issued a 6-3 order delaying enforcement of a St. Clair judge's ruling that allowed the games to be installed at the American Legion Hall in Ashville. Riley urged the court to use the opportunity to issue a broader ruling on the machines.
"Ultimately, only this court can put a statewide end to the cancer of slot machines masquerading as `electronic bingo,'" Minor and lawyers for the governor wrote. "The clearest way for the court to do so is to rule, as the federal court did, that these machines are prohibited slot machines under the Alabama Code."
Riley and Minor wrote that it is urgent for the Supreme Court to act.
"Slot machines are illegal in every county of this state - period. But because Alabama's law against slot machines is not being uniformly enforced, they are popping up in communities throughout the state," Riley said in a statement issued Thursday.
Ashville Mayor Robert L. McKay said he hoped the court would declare the machines legal, or at least allow Ashville to have electronic bingo while the issue is decided in court.
"I want a ruling. I want them to hear the case," McKay said.
McKay said he was frustrated that the Ashville operation was shut down while other electronic bingo operations across the state thrive.
"They came up here when we had a campfire, when the whole woods are on fire. ... The 40 bingo halls in Walker County is a prime example," McKay said.
Eighteen constitutional amendments and other laws approved over the years allow the operation of charity bingo in several locations across the state. The thousands of electronic bingo machines being played look nearly identical to slot machines played at Las Vegas, Biloxi and other gambling meccas.
Riley argues the machines are, in fact, illegal slot machines. Bingo operators contend the machines are legal, saying they are wired for players to play rapid-fire games of bingo against each other.
Jay Walker, a spokesman for Country Crossing, a Wiregrass country music-themed development that proposes to include electronic bingo, said the issue before the Supreme Court is whether St. Clair County bingo was operating within the bounds of the local constitutional amendment. The legality of electronic bingo is not on trial, Walker said.
Riley press secretary Todd Stacy said the issue is squarely before the Supreme Court.
"The Supreme Court is going to have the opportunity to decide once and for all whether there is a loophole that allows organized gambling to operate slot machines under the guise of bingo," Stacy said.
WASHINGTON (BP)--A new law in Mexico decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana and other narcotics -- including cocaine and heroin -- will inflict "a serious setback" to the battle against drugs in the United States, a Southern Baptist policy expert has predicted.
"We now have an entire country on our southern border that is a haven for drug abuse," Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy and research for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, noted in an Aug. 29 blog.
"Our southwestern states will suffer first from this tragic surrender as more drug-addicted people come across the border. Then the rest of the country will feel it as they move inland," Duke wrote.
"Inspections at the border will become more difficult as well, as more people attempt to cross into the country with their 'legal' drug amounts. You can be sure that U.S. relations with Mexico are going to be more strained as a result of this decision. …
"You can also expect Mexico's decision to lead to increased calls for decriminalization of drugs in the U.S.," Duke predicted, citing an Aug. 27 decision by a marijuana policy panel in Denver to urge the county court's presiding judge to adopt a $1 fine for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. "Such actions will be more common as our cities feel the added weight of Mexico's drug problem spilling over the border," Duke wrote.
Under Mexico's new drug decriminalization law, which went into effect Aug. 20, possession of 5 grams of marijuana is legal, as is half a gram of cocaine, 40 milligrams of meth (methamphetamine) and 50 milligrams of heroin, the Associated Press reported. Cocaine and LSD also would be legal in small amounts.
Selling such narcotics, possessing larger amounts of such drugs or using them in public remain illegal, the AP noted.
The new law, Mexico Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora told a news conference, will free up law enforcement officials to focus on major drug traffickers, the AP reported.
Duke, however, pointed to "a superb editorial" in Investor's Business Daily critical of Mexico's drug decriminalization. Duke noted that the IBD editorial makes "five irrefutable arguments":
"1. Consumption will increase.
"2. Addiction will increase.
"3. Treatment costs for addicts will increase.
"4. Drug traffickers will profit.
"5. The law-abiding population will be demoralized."
The Investor's Business Daily editorial predicted that "new customers mean new cash for already powerful cartels. To these organized crime groups, it means money to buy guns or to bribe officials. All of this lowers their cost of doing business, and raises it for the state to fight them. grow more powerful -- not less."
The IBD editorial singled out Venezuela and Ecuador as the "worst" of nations "with little will to fight cartels," stemming in large measure from leaders "with ties to drug traffickers like Colombia's FARC," which controls much of the nation's embattled cocaine trade. Argentina and Bolivia, IBD added, "still see the drug war as a gringo war and are indifferent to their own responsibilities even as crime and addiction grow." The IBD editorial also said: "Think tanks financed by distant billionaire George Soros have worked to make the idea of decriminalization trendy among the smart set."
However, the editorial noted that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is turning the tide against Colombia's traffickers and has "dealt hard blows to Marxist narcoterrorists -- all from a position that looked hopeless. Unlike less successful leaders, he's moving harder against legalization because he knows he can win."
Mexico President Felipe Calderon, in embracing drug decriminalization, has waved a "white flag throws away the sacrifices courageous Mexicans have already made, in blood and treasure, to crush these lawless organizations," IBD wrote. "Mexicans can't be blamed for wondering what they're fighting for if others can use drugs in front of their faces as they fight. Morale will plummet."
More than 10,000 Mexicans have been killed in the country's fight against drug cartels in recent years, including 1,000 troops, even while the nation's drug addiction rate has soared 30 percent over the last five years, according to IBD.
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws' deputy director, Paul Armentano, called the new Mexico law "a small step in the right direction" but complained that private and commercial production of marijuana and possession of larger amounts of marijuana remain criminal offenses. Armentano also complained that "marijuana will continue to be classified as contraband (and therefore seized by police), and the user will be strongly urged to seek drug treatment (or coerced to do so if it is one's third 'offense.')"
Duke, of the Southern Baptist ethics agency, frequently has countered NORML's push for marijuana legalization.
In a Baptist Press column in April, Duke noted that the push for legalizing marijuana "must be tempered by personal and social responsibility. Decriminalization of marijuana will encourage destructive behavior in users and affect the entire nation. When users no longer fear arrest, they will have marijuana more often and use it more often. Inebriation is only part of the problem. Marijuana users have higher risks of numerous medical problems, including cancer, psychosis, strokes, respiratory damage and heart attacks. They increase these risks with increased use. Additionally, increased use will lead to more personal and family problems. Work productivity will decrease as will employability. Such outcomes will put additional pressure on families, communities, businesses, health services and law enforcement."
Addressing the push for marijuana legalization for medical purposes, Duke wrote that "marijuana's pain-relieving ingredient has been available by prescription for years. The use of marijuana as a means to self-medicate one's mental health is also not justifiable. People dealing with depression need the regular care of a trained professional. If they require drugs, there are plenty of proven mood-altering ones available that do not introduce as many potential and likely problems as marijuana. Smoking marijuana medicinally threatens to make bad situations worse for many users. Marijuana introduces multiple toxic chemicals into the systems of people whose bodies are already weakened from their ailments. Not only might these toxic chemicals interfere with the healing process, but users risk developing additional problems."
--30--
Art Toalston is editor of Baptist Press. Barrett Duke's blog post on Mexico's drug decriminalization law can be viewed at http://rampartwatch.blogspot.com; the Investor's Business Daily editorial at www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=335748953038743; and Duke's column challenging marijuana legalization at http://baptistpress.net/BPFirstPerson.asp?ID=30379.
The following open letter to President Barack Obama has been distributed to news outlets throughout the nation by Dr. Dan Ireland, Executive Director of the American Council on Alcohol Problems (ACAP) and the Director Emeritus of ALCAP. It addresses the inappropriateness of the recent "Beer Summit" held by the President in the White House Gardens.
August 5, 2009
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
With your recent “Beer Summit” you have provided a tremendous complimentary boost to the alcohol industry at the public’s expense. As the American Medical Association as well as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention point out, alcohol is a drug. As reflected by the millions of alcoholic and problem drinkers in the United States, alcohol is an addictive drug as well as a killer drug. The Surgeon General says the nation averages 100,000 deaths a year due to alcohol abuse.
As I’m sure you are aware, underage consumption of alcohol is a grave concern in this nation and beer is by far the drink of choice among young Americans. The American Council on Alcohol Problems with its 30 state affiliates shares the concern of the U.S. Surgeon General and join his national efforts to reduce this major problem. The Columbia University Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse found that underage drinkers account for 20 percent of all alcohol sales. The same study concluded that excessive drinkers and teens account for nearly half of the billions of dollars spent on alcohol in one year. NIDA and NIAAA studies reveal that one in twenty Americans could be diagnosed for alcohol dependence or alcohol abuse.
The Marin Institute reports that alcohol is a leading cause of death among youth. The report also points out that every day, on average, 11,318 American youth (12 to 20 years of age) try alcohol for the first time. Alcohol is by far the most used and abused drug among America’s teenagers. According to a report in Surveillance Summaries, June 9, 2006, “Alcohol is a significant factor in the four leading causes of death among persons ages 10 to 24: (1) motor-vehicle crashes, (2) unintentional injuries, (3) homicide, and (4) suicide. According to a report of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “In spite of laws about underage drinking, 1.1 billion cans of beer are consumed by junior and senior high school students each year.” It is also reported that alcohol in all its forms causes one-third of all preventable deaths in the United States.
Mr. President, in addition to all the research revealing the multiplied negatives of alcoholic beverages it is appalling that you, as the President of the United States, would taint the high esteem of your office with a “Beer Summit” on public property by hosting a week of free advertising for the beer industry in the press, radio and television.
Dr. Joe Godfrey, Executive Director of the Alabama Citizens Action Program has well concluded, “When considering the lives that have been destroyed, the homes that have been broken, the job hours that have been lost and the health costs that have spiraled upwards as a result of alcohol use in America, it is regrettable that the President of the United States has given such unnecessary attention to this drug by hosting his recent ‘Beer Summit.’”
Mr. President, a “Beer Summit” does not solve problems. The alcohol product intensifies problems. Local officials and our court systems are quite capable in solving problems without a “Beer Summit.” Public officials do not need to dignify killer drugs with public property summits. This display of approval, indeed, sends the wrong message to the general public, especially the underage group.
Dr. D.L. Dan Ireland, Executive Director
American Council on Alcohol Problems
"What can I do to make a difference?"
Often, people will ask me, “What can I do to make a difference in my community, in our state and in our nation?”
The following is an edited version of my response to someone asking that very question. Of course, there are a number of other actions that an individual can take, but these are given as a way of triggering other ideas in your own mind. While I don’t mention it in the list below, prayer should certainly head the list! As Christians, we are called by the Apostle Paul in Romans 13 to pray for our government leaders.
Stand up and let your voice be heard concerning the moral issues confronting our nation! Make contact with your United States Senators (Shelby and Sessions) and with your U.S. Representatives (depends on where you live). Let them (or someone in their local or Washington offices) know where you stand on specific issues and encourage them to vote accordingly. On the state level, make contact with your State Senator and Representative (depends on where you live). The fact that you have gone to the trouble of looking them up and made an effort to contact them will make your concerns VERY serious to them.
[Go to our “Legislative News” page and click on the appropriate link to find your senators and representatives and their contact information. To find your U.S. Representative, click here; to find contact information for each of our two U.S. Senators, click here.]
What other specific actions might an individual take in order to make a difference?
1.Allow your name to be put on the “ALCAP Alert!” list. When the Alabama Legislature is in session, ALCAP sends out alerts so that the people of Alabama can be aware of specific bills that are being introduced in the House and Senate in Montgomery and, when appropriate, I ask people to contact their state legislators. ALCAP occasionally sends out alerts when the Legislature is not in session, but those are very rare (we try not to fill up your in-box with unnecessary information). Call or email the ALCAP office and give us your e-mail address and we will add it to our list. [NOTE: Anything you receive from me or other organizations (see #3 below), please forward to everyone in your e-mail address book and/or data base.]
2.Be sure and check out all of the resources and links available on our ALCAP website. These resources can provide you with information that will help you when you are talking to others about the moral issues facing our state and nation.
3.If you would like to receive information from the Alabama Policy Institute (headed by Gary Palmer) you can stay informed on both state and national issues that are of concern to believers. Also, you can find resources on the “Eagle Forum of Alabama” website. Eagle Forum is headed by Eunie Smith, a member at FBC of Birmingham. Both of these organizations have e-mail alerts and newsletters that you can sign up to receive and both are excellent organizations. ALCAP, while we do deal with a few broader issues, tries to focus mostly on alcohol and gambling issues. API and the Eagle Forum often discuss broader issues such as environmental and economic issues. ALCAP stays focused on state-level issues, but API and Eagle Forum will give much more attention to national issues.
4.If you are interested in presenting one or more of our ALCAP modules in local schools (listed and described on our “Education” page on our website), contact Dr. Bill Day who will provide you with the training and resource material you will need. ALCAP pays its presenters mileage to and from the schools and a small stipend. We are getting ready to rename our educational arm of the ministry, “American Character Builders,” and after raising the money necessary for the up-front production costs, we are going to begin turning our modules into kits that the classroom teachers can use themselves if they desire to do so.
5.I would also encourage you to stay involved by writing letters to the editor of your local newspaper on issues that may come up throughout the year. This is a great tool for influencing our culture as the “salt and light” God has called us to be—a tool that is often overlooked by Christians.
New Shoulder Tapping Prevention Campaign
A campaign, targeting parents and businesses, got underway this month to raise awareness about shoulder tapping. Shoulder tapping, also known as "Hey Mister," is when youth ask adults, usually strangers, to buy alcohol for them.
The campaign is part of the statewide Face it, Parents underage drinking prevention initiative and coordinated by Oregon Partnership, the Department of Human Services, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission and the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association. The campaign includes posters, articles, radio public service announcements and other materials.
With hundreds of thousands of smokers dying each year, tobacco companies are expanding their product line to smokeless tobacco products that target a new batch of customers: young people.
A recent Portland Family Magazine guest op-ed by Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley talks about a dangerous new product, tobacco candy, currently being test marketed in three cities across the country, including Portland.
NOTE: The following article is an introduction to a longer article that gives 12 questions and answers concerning predatory gambling (please click on the link at the end of the article to read the entire article). The article focuses on the evil nature of predatory gambling. ALCAP opposes all forms of gambling (social as well as predatory). However, the electronic bingo machines that some are attempting to foist on the people of Alabama are an especially hideous and dangerous form of gambling. It is because of our concern with predatory gambling that this article from the national organization, Stop Predatory Gambling (formerly the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling), is being published on our ALCAP website:
Predatory Gambling, Democracy and the American Dream
Summary : “It’s predatory, deceptive, addictive and undermines the purpose and promise of America.”
An Overview
No major public policy issue exists in America that is more talked about yet less understood than casino-style gambling. While there are many well-intentioned public officials, reporters, editorial writers and bloggers who discuss the issue in terms of state revenues and potential jobs, most know virtually nothing about the product design, the technology, the marketing and the business model used by the casino trade. Most don't even use the products frequently, if at all. And most don't have personal relationships with the out-of-control gamblers who make up nearly all of the profits.
The debate on slot machines and casino-style gambling is not about jobs and revenues. Nor is it about whether we "permit" gambling. It's not about buying a square in the Super Bowl office pool or playing poker with the guys from the neighborhood on Friday night. Those are examples of social forms of gambling.
The debate is about predatory gambling - using gambling to prey on human weakness for profit-and it is government’s version of subprime lending. The key question in the debate is this: Why is government, especially during these severe economic times, trying to convince citizens to spend large sums on virtually worthless gambling products instead of urging them to save and invest in their future? [Click here to read the entire article.]
Natasha Schull, who was raised in New York’s Greenwich Village, first encountered Las Vegas on the way to college, when her connecting flight was delayed there for a few hours.
“It was the most bizarre place I’d ever been. I wasn’t familiar with malls or theme parks or any of the elements that you see exemplified in Las Vegas,” she says. “I was immediately fascinated.” Schull, who has studied gambling in Las Vegas for the past 15 years, is a cultural anthropologist and assistant professor in MIT’s Program on Science, Technology, and Society. She recently wrote Machine Zone: Technology and Compulsion in Las Vegas, a book based on her research on compulsive gamblers and the engineers who design the slot machines they play. The book will be published next fall.
She also has created a documentary film, BUFFET: All You Can Eat Las Vegas, which aired recently on PBS. Her current work focuses on the social dimensions of neuroscience, specifically neuroeconomics, neuromarketing, and addiction pharmacology.
Schull says that the casino industry is building gambling machines that are increasingly effective at taking gamblers’ money. Slot machines, which now earn more than 75 percent of casino revenue, are designed to make people play longer, faster, and more intensively. “The ideal customer is someone who sits at a machine until their money is gone,” she says. “In the industry it’s called “player extinction,” and that’s the aim.
BECOMING DEPENDENT
“I don’t think the gambling industry is an evil empire intentionally trying to addict people,” Schull says. “What they’re trying to do is maximize profit. But when you mix maximizing profit with the design of a human-machine interface, and then you add people who are looking for escape, it’s a perfect storm of elements to produce a situation of dependency.” Schull thinks it’s telling that we speak about problem gamblers but not problem machines, problem environments, or problem business practices.
“Since addiction is a relationship between a person and an object or activity, it makes sense to take a close look at the gambling technology — not just the gamblers.”
As Schull explains, today’s machines are much different from ones of the past. Visual graphics are now calibrated so the gamblers’ eyes won’t get tired so quickly. Sound is manipulated as well, to reduce the stress of cacophony in cavernous spaces. To facilitate faster play, today’s machines have buttons and touch-screens instead of handles and mechanical reels.
Instead of coins, they accept player credit cards. Instead of a few games per minute, it is now possible to play hundreds. Inside the machines, complicated algorithms control the odds.
“Every feature of the machines is geared to keep people playing until they’re broke.”
A STATE OF FLOW
In an effort to pull in revenue for state coffers, Massachusetts, along with several other states, including Kentucky, Illinois, and Maryland, recently had plans to license casinos, she says. “If you actually do the math, it’s not really a viable economic solution to the woes of state finance. What it offers, though, is a very tempting immediate injection of cash.”
Schull herself is not a gambler, but says she can relate to gamblers when they talk about the repetitive, absorbed relationship they enter into with the technology. “I think many of us understand what it’s like to zone out on machines.
“The experience they describe is not unlike the sense of flow people experience when they dance, paint, or write. It’s sometimes a glorious thing to be swept away by something for hours. Sometimes you come out with a wonderful product. But the gamblers don’t have a product. They emerge from the zone totally depleted — physically, mentally, and financially. They feel drained and empty. In effect, these machines exploit the very human desire to become absorbed.”
NOTE: The following article focuses on slot machines. The electronic bingo machines being introduced and debated in Alabama are the same type of machines and have the same addictive characteristics.
Glitzy Video Slots Seen as Particular Addiction Risk
Among addiction specialists, video slot machines have come to be known as the "crack cocaine" of the gambling industry.
The mechanical wheels of spinning fruit used in the old one-armed bandits have gone the way of the typewriter. Modern-day slot machines are computerized sound-and-light shows so skillfully designed to keep players glued to their seats that some have been known to wear adult diapers to avoid bathroom breaks.
As state Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill promotes the idea of licensing three slot parlors in Massachusetts, some mental health and gambling specialists warn that the newer machines deliver such potent gambling highs that they can be particularly addictive.
The video slots allow players to gamble incredibly rapidly, winning or losing a game every several seconds without a break, to the point that their brains are undergoing the equivalent of an intravenous drip of an intoxicating drug, said Bob Breen, director of the Rhode Island Hospital Gambling Treatment Program.
"When you sit in front of the slots, especially if it's 24/7, there are no cues for you to quit," he said. "There's no time to stop and think. You're getting that constant drip, and people describe it as being in the zone," he said.
The gaming industry defends the computerized slots, saying their widespread use has not led to increased addiction problems.
But in 15 years of clinical experience, Breen has found that gambling descends into pathology much more quickly among slots players than among people who bet on sports, races, cards, or lotteries.
It tends to take just a year, as opposed to up to five for other types of gambling, said Breen, who has published two studies that analyzed more than 200 addicted patients.
It is not only the speed of the games that makes so addictive the playing of new-style electronic gaming machines, which include video lottery and electronic poker games along with high-tech versions of traditional slots. The machines produce a highly intense and continous experience for players, said Natasha Schull, an MIT professor who has studied the machines, their designers, and their players.
There is no waiting for the horses to run or the wheel to stop spinning, she said. And the machines have been cramming more and more betting possibilities into each wagering moment, so that a nickel machine might actually allow 100 bets of a nickel at one push of the button.
"It's like playing 100 machines at once," she said.
Brain studies have shown that gambling causes the release of dopamine, a feel-good chemical that spurs the desire to repeat a pleasurable behavior and that is involved in drug addiction. The pleasure comes not just from winning, but from the process of playing and anticipating a possible win.
"Worldwide evidence shows that slot machines tend to be more problematic than most other types of gambling, in terms of addiction," said Mark Griffiths professor of gambling studies at Nottingham Trent University in England. In some European countries, he said, up to 80 or 90 percent of the calls to help lines for gambling addiction now concern slot-machine problems.
Overall, there are perhaps 30 different ways in which electronic slot machines keep players playing, Griffiths said, including their use of lights, colors, "ka-ching!" sounds, familiar television characters such as those in "The Simpsons," and rapid-fire payouts. "It's the kitchen-sink approach," he said.
One trick: Though the machines generate their winning or losing combinations randomly, they also tend to be programmed to make it look as if players have a great number of near-wins, said Roger Horbay, president of Game Planit Interactive, a Canadian company that develops educational tools to prevent problem gambling. "You get the impression your odds are good, you're about to win," he said.
Horbay, a former addiction counselor, and Breen both say that slots gamblers they have treated tend to differ from other gambling addicts, who often have preexisting psychiatric or life problems that put them at risk for addiction.
After slot machines came to Ontario, Horbay said, "what stuck out for me was that a lot of these folks had never had a problem before they met a machine."
Cahill has argued that slot machine parlors would not generate any more social problems than the resort casinos proposed last year by Governor Deval Patrick; both have a revenue model that relies heavily on slot machines. And, he says, people are gambling in other states anyway - Rhode Island has slots emporiums, and Connecticut has casinos - and bringing slots to Massachusetts would allow the state to establish a fund to treat gambling addictions.
"All we're saying is to let Massachusetts people do what they want with their money in their state, as opposed to having to drive out of state," Cahill told reporters this week. "We're not looking to exacerbate the problem, just try to capture it here in the state."
Some also dispute whether the machines are more of a problem than other forms of gambling.
"We don't believe any one activity is more addictive than any other," said Christine Reilly, executive director of the Institute for Research on Pathological Gambling and Related Disorders, which receives most of its funding from the gambling-industry-supported National Center for Responsible Gaming.
"What the research is telling us now is that addiction is a relationship between a vulnerable person and the object of addiction, which can be just about anything," she said.
She pointed out that despite the huge growth in the gambling industry in recent years, gambling addiction in the United States has remained steady at about 1 percent of the population, with an additional 2 to 3 percent having a gambling problem that falls short of full-blown addiction.
Holly Thomsen, spokeswoman for the gambling industry's leading trade group, the American Gaming Association, cited those unchanging figures, as well.
"They put the lie to the premise that these machines are causing more addictions," she said. The machines "are clearly in more locations than they've ever been, and yet the studies keep coming back the same."
Schull countered that while addiction may be relatively rare in the general population, a number of studies have found that problem gamblers generate between 30 percent and 50 percent of the revenue from machine play, indicating that the figures cited by the industry understate the addiction's impact.
The gambling industry "promotes the idea that there's a small group of people who are predisposed and the rest of us can gamble normally," she said.
But machine manufacturers aim to maximize their profits by "getting people to sit there as long as possible and gamble as intensively as possible," she said.
While they may not intend to produce addicts, Schull said, they can.
Matt Viser of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Carey Goldberg can be reached at goldberg@globe.com.
How to Stop Drunk Drivers
Parade Magazine, Page 6
February 1, 2009
Drunk drivers kill about 13,000 Americans each year and injure hundreds of thousands more. Now, California and Wisconsin are considering new laws that would require people convicted of drunk driving to use a technology called an ignition interlock. Drivers blow into a device that measures blood-alcohol content. If the level is too high, the car will not start. Fourteen states already routinely use the technology, which experts say can reduce subsequent drunk-driving offenses by up to 64%.
Critics say that manufacturers of the devices--for which convicted drunk drivers must pay up to $110 a month--have aggressively lobbied to make the units mandatory to increase profits. But law-enforcement officials say ignition interlocks work. "When the device is on, you see a decrease in repeat offenders," says Barbara Lauer of Florida's Department of Motor Vehicles. "Once it's off, the numbers go right back up."
Tell us: Should ignition interlocks be mandatory for drunk drivers nation-wide? Vote at Parade.com/drunkdriving.
Youth Drinking Higher Where Alcohol Outlets Proliferate
January 5, 2009
Research Summary
Adolescents who live within walking distance of a liquor store or other alcohol outlet are more likely to engage in binge drinking or drive drunk, according to researchers from the Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, Calif.
The Los Angeles Times reported Dec. 29 that drinking rates were higher among 12- to 17-year-olds who lived within a half-mile of an alcohol outlet, and that minority neighborhoods tended to have a higher density of alcohol outlets than predominantly white communities.How do alcohol outlets affect communities?
"Our study suggests that living in close proximity to alcohol outlets is a risk factor for youth," according to the researchers. "In California, retail licenses are not typically approved within 100 feet of a residence or within 600 feet of schools, public playgrounds and nonprofit youth facilities, but proximity by itself is not sufficient to deny a license ... More attention on the proximity rule is needed and environmental interventions need to curb opportunities for youth to get alcohol from commercial sources."
1. "You can't win..."
Everyone knows the house has an advantage. But most casino patrons don't realize just how heavily the odds are stacked against them. Take keno, in which you pick a string of numbers, hoping to match them to what the casino randomly generates. The house advantage is at least 25%, increasing with the more numbers you pick, says John Alcamo, author of Casino Gambling Behind the Tables. The odds of hitting, say, the 10 spot — a string of 10 numbers — are nine million to one. (Getting killed by fireworks is nine times more likely.) Despite those odds, a $2 bet usually pays off at only $50,000 to $200,000. Slot machines are popular because they offer a shot at a big jackpot for little investment. For example, $3 gets you a chance at the Megabucks jackpot, which links slot machines in Nevada and builds like a state lottery from a base of $5 million. The odds of winning? Nearly 17 million to one. You have a better chance of being killed by an asteroid striking Earth.
OK, so maybe you won't win the jackpot in slots. But surely you have a decent shot of walking out ahead of the game, right? Don't count on it. "Slot machines are the biggest moneymakers in the casino," Alcamo says. "That should tell the players something." Experts like him never play games that give the house more than a 2% advantage, and quarter slots put the advantage at about 8%.
Your best bet? Blackjack. If you play perfect strategy, the house advantage is less than 1%. And in craps, the pass- and come-line bets give the house an advantage of less than 1.5%.
2. "...and if you do, we might not pay you."
While on vacation in Lake Tahoe in September 1996, Cengiz Sengel stopped to show his wife the lights of Reno, Nev. They walked into the Silver Legacy casino, got a $20 bag of quarters and headed straight to one of the slot machines. A few pulls later, three jackpot symbols popped up in the windows. The Sengels jumped up and down, hugging each other as fellow slot players rushed over to congratulate them. They had just won nearly $1.8 million. Or so they thought. A supervisor, claiming the machine had malfunctioned, denied the Sengels the payout. The couple appealed all the way to the state Supreme Court, which this June ruled against them.
Effie Freeman can sympathize. In 1995, she put $3 into a slot machine at the now — defunct Splash Casino in Tunica, Miss., and was stunned to see red, white and blue ducks line up, signaling a $1.7 million jackpot. But the state gaming commission ruled that it didn't count because the machine had gone into "tilt" mode.
Todd Westergard, a Nevada regulator, says that such decisions, no matter how cruel they sound, are only fair. It's the computers inside the machines, not what pops up in the window, that determine winners, he says, and in the Sengels' case the computer connection was disrupted.
But gamblers don't care about the technical explanations. "The main thing is that we got those three symbols," says Cengiz Sengel. "They found a way not to pay us."
3. "We promise more than we deliver."
Twenty-seven years ago only seven states had lotteries, and only Nevada allowed casinos. Now 37 states have lotteries, and 28 have casinos (including Indian gaming). Why have policy makers and the public allowed gambling to flourish? One reason is the notion that it creates jobs and commerce.
But research suggests the downside far outweighs the benefits. "The economy as a whole would be much better off had we not allowed [casino gaming] to expand," says Earl Grinols, a University of Illinois economics professor. Figuring in a broad range of factors — crime, lost productivity, bankruptcy, social services and regulatory costs — Grinols determined that each pathological and problem gambler costs the public $13,600 per year; the total works out to $180 per citizen. That more than negates the industry's economic benefit, which Grinols estimates at $50 to $70 per citizen.
Much of the income generated by casinos simply gets diverted from other local businesses, critics say. Atlantic City's a good example. Within four years of the casinos' arrival, a third of the city's retail businesses had closed. Meanwhile, crime soared.
What about lotteries? That money surely is a windfall for causes like public education, right? Not always. A study by St. Mary's College professors Patrick Pierce and Donald Miller found that while lotteries provide an initial boost to education budgets, the increases quickly taper off. In fact, the professors say, states with lotteries eventually provide less support for public education per capita than do states without them.
4. "We know everything about you."
Casinos have developed sophisticated techniques for targeting and profiling repeat gamblers. Harrah's Entertainment (HET) has led the way, hiring marketing experts and a Harvard professor. In 1997, the company began gathering details on players when it rolled out its Total Gold frequent-gambler cards (now called Total Rewards) and has built a database of 19 million customers. Players insert the cards into slot machines or hand them to casino supervisors when they play table games. The cards are marketed as a prestige item that helps players accumulate comps such as free rooms, meals and show tickets. But the real purpose is to track the habits of each customer and tailor a marketing plan that will keep players coming.
If you're a big bettor, you'll find that casinos know all kinds of creepy information — just enough to push your buttons. "You put your slot card in the machine and bing, it's ticking off in the office," says syndicated columnist Mark Pilarski, who spent 18 years working at casinos. "If you're a good customer, they send down a hostess, she pats you on your back and offers you dinner. She gets information on you. Next time you come in they ask about your wife or dog by name. They know your anniversary. They'll definitely send you a card for your birthday."
5. "We're a lousy investment."
If you don't want to bet on their games, maybe wagering on casino stocks is a good option. Think again. Though gaming stocks are up 16% this year, most haven't provided a great return over the long haul. The sector's up only 22% over the past five years, compared with the S&P 500's 171% increase.
Some stocks have been outright busts. Harrah's is trading 47% below where it was five years ago. Mandalay Resort Group (MBG) is down 35%. And let's hope you didn't let your money ride on The Donald. Stock in Trump's gaming company, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts (DJT) is down 78% over the past five years.
One big winner has been MGM Grand (MGM: 13.00, +0.15, +1.16%), up 36% this year. Still, analysts at Salomon Smith Barney and Lehman Brothers just downgraded their ratings on the stock from Buy to Neutral. The reason? With a recent expansion of casinos and hotel rooms, Vegas may be getting saturated. Add in competition from Indian gaming in California and the prospect of a slowing economy, and revenue could take a hit.
Gaming stocks are not for the faint of heart. Saddled with debt, many of these companies experience the kind of wild price swings that only a day trader could love. "It's a very trade-oriented sector," says Lehman Brothers analyst Stuart Linde. "It goes in a boom-or-bust cycle."
6. "Addicts keep us in business."
Does the gaming industry target addicts? "It's like asking, Does the vodka industry target alcoholics?" says Henry Lesieur, head of the Institute for Problem Gambling. "Well, they target heavy drinkers, and a certain percentage are alcoholics."
Duke professors Charles Clotfelter and Phillip Cook did a study that found that 10% of lottery players account for 68% of lottery purchases. Similarly, Illinois professor Grinols estimates that one-third to one-half of casino revenue comes from problem or pathological gamblers. "After a while [some casinos] don't want compulsive gamblers because they overrun their credit," Lesieur says. "But by then they've already made a lot of money off of them."
Perhaps more disturbing are cases where casinos allow known addicts to continue betting. After losing a million dollars, Houston businessman Joe McNeely sent a letter to several Louisiana casinos asking that they not allow him to gamble. But that didn't prevent him from losing another $2 million. McNeely then sued five casinos, claiming they continued to market to him aggressively even after they were aware of his addiction. Representatives of one casino, he says, even showed up at his mother's funeral and invited him to stop by. Though the casinos pointed out that McNeely hadn't registered with the state police, which has a self-banning system in place for addicts, they settled the suit last fall for an undisclosed amount.
7. "We target your children..."
More kids today gamble than are involved with drugs, smoking or drinking, according to Jeff Derevensky, a psychology professor at McGill University in Montreal. One reason: They're growing up with a message that wagering is acceptable. "Today's 10-year-old will spend their entire life in a world in which gambling is sanctioned and owned by the government," he says. To make matters worse, Derevensky has found that the addiction rate among youths is two to four times that of the population at large.
Though it's illegal to play the lottery if you're under 18, studies show that a high share of adolescents buy tickets — 32% in Louisiana, 34% in Texas and 35% in Connecticut. How? In some states, ticket sales aren't always monitored. Twenty-nine states use automated machines in public places such as airports and stores as one way of dispensing instant-game tickets. "You'll see that [the industry is] trying to appeal to younger people," says Laura Letson, executive director of the New York Council on Problem Gambling. Last year, for example, the council flagged the New York lottery for its marketing tie-in with Warner Bros." "Wild Wild West" — a movie rated PG-13.
It's not just lotteries that are accused of catering to kids. Pete Earley, author of "Super Casino", points to the new family-friendly atmosphere promoted in Las Vegas. (MGM Grand now has the second-largest theme park in the country.) "It's calculated," he says. "You're encouraging future generations to come there, and reinforcing that gambling is OK."
8. "...and your parents."
Five years ago an elderly woman was brought by her adult children to a geriatric clinic in Omaha. Caring for their mother after she had a stroke, the children discovered that she had rung up $35,000 on credit cards at casinos in nearby Council Bluffs, Iowa. It was the first of many similar cases for Dennis McNeilly, a psychologist at that clinic.
He began studying the effects of gambling on seniors and found that casinos tailor their marketing to attract an older crowd. The Station Casino in St. Charles, Mo., for instance, has a Golden Opportunities Club for people 55-plus, in which they can earn credits toward meals and gambling chips. The casino also offers free valet parking and $1 lunches to seniors, and some of its slot machines are based on detective stories from the '40s. Some casinos run shuttle buses from retirement homes. McNeilly found one casino that featured former stars of Lawrence Welk's TV show. The industry even has a term, "third-of-the-month club," to describe gamblers whose casino trips coincide with the arrival of Social Security checks.
"The senior population is getting destroyed by gambling," says Ed Looney, executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey. He cites the fact that in 1997, gamblers 60 and older accounted for 65% of the $3.7 billion Atlantic City took in. "You have a right to market your product, but there's a line you need to draw," Looney says. He points out research that shows seniors get to the crisis stage of gambling faster, and don't have the time to rebuild their finances when they get in trouble. "There's no way they can recover," he says.
9. "We have your legislators in our pocket."
At an investors' conference in June, MGM Grand Chief Financial Officer James Murren was asked about the status of the company's new temporary casino in Detroit. He acknowledged that MGM couldn't complete a permanent facility in four years, as it had promised the city. Still, he added, "There's no way in the world they're going to shut us down. We pay our gaming taxes daily."
His comments reflect just how reliant policy makers have become on casino money. And it's not just in the form of taxes. In 1998 congressional and presidential candidates received $5.7 million from the gaming industry, up from $1.1 million in 1992. Soft-money contributions jumped from $400,000 to $3.8 million.
From 1997 through 1999, the gaming industry spent $22.5 million lobbying federal lawmakers, more than such powerful contingents as alcohol and gun groups, according to political watchdog Common Cause. With that kind of spending, it would be tough to pass antigaming legislation, says William Thompson, a professor of public administration at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. "They've got the bucks, and the opposition doesn't. The casinos make contributions to every viable candidate." Adds Robert Goodman, head of the U.S.Gambling Research Institute: "Government is moving toward relationships that are problematic."
10. "Our regulation is full of loopholes."
Gaming industry officials like to say that their business is tightly regulated. But the truth is, regulators often have their hands tied. Take Indian casinos. Though they have to cooperate with the states to some extent, often tribes are left to regulate themselves. A new compact in California, for instance, leaves it unclear whether the state has the power to audit the tribes' books or inspect their slot machines.
Keeping tabs on Internet gambling is even tougher. Congress is discussing possible measures, but for now regulators can do little about the 850 foreign sites that cater to U.S. gamblers. In some countries, all that's necessary to get a license is to register. "They don't have anything like regulation," says Sue Schneider, chair of the Interactive Gaming Council.
Then there are the "cruises to nowhere," boats that depart from coastal U.S. cities and head into international water, where they offer gambling in an unregulated environment. "In a lot of cases, we aren't even sure who the entities are operating these games," says Kent Perez, Florida assistant attorney general.
Before you buy your teen a cell phone ...
Posted on Dec 19, 2008 | by Dwayne Hastings
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--If someone in your family has a new cell phone on their Christmas list, you might want to get to Santa before he packs his sleigh.
The latest generation of cell phones offers an expanded array of features -- some which may put your teenager at risk. New wireless technology allows users to download digital video content and other material directly from the Internet to wireless handheld devices such as the feature-rich cell phones and iPods.
These rapid advances in wireless technology and mobile entertainment prompted the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families to publish a timely and practical guide for parents: "Sex and Cell Phones: Protect Your Children."
Approximately 79 percent of all teens (17 million) have a mobile device -- a 36 percent increase since 2005, according to the International Association for the Wireless Telecommunications Industry (CITA). Most teens have a conventional cell phone, but a growing number (currently 15 percent) own a smart phone, which has capabilities far beyond those common to most phones introduced just two years ago.
While cell phones allow parents and their children to communicate more easily at any time of day, the phones are increasingly being used for less-than-wholesome activities, including the transmission and receipt of sexually explicit content.
While some advanced phones allow parents to actually locate their child using the phone's GPS chip, the devices also allow students to cheat in the classroom using texting features. School officials recognize the value of students having phones in an emergency but are concerned about the distractions offered by the newer phones' features. On many wireless phones, students can surf the Internet or watch live television while their geometry teacher explains the wonder of yet another theorem.
The Sex and Cell Phones publication warns that every child is at risk -- directly or indirectly -- because of the "sexually explicit content delivered over the Internet by computers and wireless technologies." The booklet notes, "Each day in our nation, young people are victimized by those who seek to steal their innocence and corrupt their minds."
The adult entertainment industry expects 2009 to be a breakout year for "mobile porn" as more phones come on the market with "high-quality graphics," according to a Reuters report earlier this year. The story said Apple's iPhone is ideal for viewing pornography because of its graphics and upgraded Web browser.
The Sex and Cell Phones guide encourages parents to become educated about the new technology and "engage in open and consistent discussions" with their children about safe use practices. The booklet provides a suggested "Safe Use Agreement" for parents and children to read and sign that offers a basis for developing "specific understanding and agreement" between parent and child relating to the cell phone use.
One of the booklet's most valuable features is a series of questions that parents should ask a wireless company's representative when purchasing a phone. The script includes questions about the phone's Internet accessibility and blocking and filtering options and is designed to give parents more than just a basic comprehension of the phone's capabilities.
The guide includes a table that lists parent-control features offered by each of the major cell phone carriers, including the estimated cost of the controls.
The Sex and Cell Phones resource can be downloaded from iLiveValues.com/cellphones.
--30--
Dwayne Hastings is a vice president with the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
ALCAP Update
Good News Concerning Alcoholic Energy Drinks!
Great news! Several months ago, Anheuser-Busch agreed to stop distributing alcoholic energy drinks, but MillerCoors refused to do so. Now, MillerCoors has been forced by a settlement with a group of state attorneys general to suspend their marketing of these dangerous drinks! [Read the full story below]
A settlement between MillerCoors and a group of state attorneys general will spell the end of the brewer's foray into marketing alcoholic energy drinks.
The Wall Street Journal reported Dec. 18 that MillerCoors announced that it will stop producing and selling caffeinated alcoholic beverages, including those sold under its popular Sparks brand. At the same time, company officials maintained that the AGs allegations that the drinks were marketed to young drinkers were "inaccurate."
"Attorneys general from around the country are gravely concerned about premixed alcoholic energy drinks because these products are dangerous and look and taste like popular nonalcoholic energy drinks," said Maine Attorney General Steve Rowe. "They're popular with young people who wrongly believe that the caffeine will counteract the intoxicating effects of the alcohol."
Critics condemn youth-orinted Sparks marketing materials implying that alcoholic energy drinks allow users to stay awake longer and drink more. "It was a bad idea that never should have gotten as far as it did -- adding caffeine to sweetened, high-alcohol-content malt beverages and marketing them to young people via word-of-mouth and infantile web sites," said Steve Gardner, director of litigation for The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), which sued MillerCoors earlier this year over Sparks.
"We're thrilled that MillerCoors finally got the message that they were dealing with a public-health hazard," said Pete Schulberg, communications director for the Oregon Partnership, a community-based antidrug coalition. "High caffeine with high alcohol content and the fact that these products are marketing to young people makes for a dangerous combination."
Sparks has emerged as the leading brand in the alcoholic energy drink niche market; MillerCoors said it will continue to sell a reformulated version of Sparks that does not include caffeine, taurine, guarana and ginseng.
The company also agreed to end some marketing strategies that the AGs said appeared to be aimed at underage drinking, including content on the Sparks website. David Rosenbloom, director of Join Together, said the settlement's marketing reforms are just as important as the product's reformulation.
"Removing caffeine and other stimulants from Sparks is an important step for public health because it removes a significant risk associated with the product," said Rosenbloom. "We hope that this settlement will really lead to the end of the company's efforts to sell alcopops to underage audiences with youth-oriented marketing strategies."
CSPI's Gardner said that today's settlement nearly finishes off the product category. "Now that Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors have each agreed separately to discontinue caffeinated alcoholic drinks, this entire niche of products is all but shut down," said Steve Gardner, director of litigation at CSPI. Gardner called on the remaining, smaller companies producing caffeinated alcohol beverages to quickly follow suit.
Earlier this year, Anheuser-Busch reached a settlement with CSPI and state attorneys general in which it agreed to stop producing and marketing alcoholic energy drinks.
Abstainers Working for a Better World
An article from "The Inside Story"
The International Organization of Good Templars (IOGT), under the leadership of Vince Peterson, PhD, a former professor at Indiana University and author of the book, A Nation Under the Influence: America's Addiction to Alcohol, has proposed a 10-point agenda for all who are concerned about educational and public policy issues regarding alcohol. Click here to read this story.
Booze may speed shrinking of the brain
NEW DANGER | Smaller brains a risk, study finds
October 14, 2008
First, the experts said drinking low to moderate amounts of alcohol was a good idea, that it might protect against heart disease.
Now, a study has found that such drinking has a risk: It might speed the shrinking of the brain that naturally comes with age.
The scientists found that the more people drank, the smaller the size of their brains. Even people who drank lightly -- one to seven drinks a week -- had slightly smaller brains than non-drinkers, according to the study in the Archives of Neurology.
The association was especially pronounced in women, perhaps because women's typically smaller body size renders them more vulnerable to alcohol, according to the researchers from Wellesley College, Boston University, the Framingham Heart Study and the University of California, Davis.
The gradual decrease in brain size seen as participants drank more was "slightly larger than the average decline in brain volume per year with aging."
The group studied 1,839 adults who were part of the Framingham Offspring Study, which began in 1971. The participants underwent brain scans from 1999 to 2001 and reported the number of alcoholic beverages they consumed each week.
Their brain volumes were measured as a percent of total cranial volume. Those in the lowest drinking category -- one to seven drinks a week -- had brain volumes of 78 percent of their total cranial volume, compared with 78.6 percent in abstainers. Those in the highest drinking category -- 14 or more drinks a week -- had brain volumes of 77.3 percent. Researchers computed the figures after adjusting for age, body size, weight and other factors.
meant to make it more difficult for young people to acquire alcohol have significantly reduced drunk-driving deaths, according to a new study.
Two federal policies meant to make it harder for young people to acquire alcohol have significantly reduced drunken-driving deaths, a new study finds.
The policies — banning purchase or possession of alcohol by people under 21 and making it illegal to use false identification to buy alcohol — have been in effect in all 50 states since at least 1988, when Congress made them a condition for federal highway money.
Reporting in the July issue of Accident Analysis and Prevention, the scientists calculate that the possession and purchase laws reduced the ratio of drinking to nondrinking drivers involved in fatal crashes by about 11 percent. Laws requiring an automatic license sanction for the use of fake IDs resulted in a 7 percent decrease.
“Raising the drinking age to 21 does save lives,” said James C. Fell of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, lead author of the study, “and while every state makes it illegal to have a fake ID, they really should strongly consider a driver’s license sanction for the offender. That made a big difference in our analysis.”
The authors acknowledge that their study measured only the presence or absence of the laws, not the effect of lax or vigorous enforcement. But they add that the effect of the laws was independent of other factors, including auto safety improvements and the reduction in the allowable blood-alcohol level in drivers to 0.08 from 0.10.
Article from CitizenLink (a publication of Focus on the Family)
10-1-2008
Should Christians Argue Politics?
by Frank Pastore
'Our political and social policies should grow out of our theology, not vice versa.'
Note: This column originally appeared Sept. 30 on Townhall.com. It is used with permission.
For the past several months, I’ve heard two recurring themes from critics of my show: “You’re too political and unloving; Christians shouldn’t argue about politics,” and “You’re not fair and balanced; you’re close-minded and too biased against liberals.”
Perhaps many Christians believe these things because they don’t understand politics is really an exercise of theology applied — one way we love our neighbors as ourselves. Our political and social policies should grow out of our theology, not vice versa. We are not to reverse engineer our theology based upon our political and social agendas. Our faith is foundational to everything else. For Christians, theology creates and shapes our approach to politics; for non-Christians, politics creates and shapes their approach to theology — or at least their worldview.
A Christian becomes too political when their politics is no longer rooted in their theology, when their faith becomes merely peripheral and unnecessary to their political agenda, rather than the one thing that is fundamental and essential.
How we vote to spend our tax dollars, what economic and social policies we hope to advance through votes for particular candidates, and what domestic and foreign policies we hope our government advances — these things are the applications of the values rooted in our Christian worldview.
Just as how I choose to invest my time and treasure is the best expression of whether I’m living out my Christian values, so too what the government spends money on and what policy preferences it pursues is the best expression of our true American values.
The best way for me to love my neighbor is through those things I choose to do personally. The second best way is through votes for candidates who support policies that I believe will promote the common good. Thus, I am political because I am loving, and I am loving because I am Christian. Therefore, I should argue — albeit in a God-glorifying manner — about politics.
Perhaps many Christians don’t know how to argue without getting angry — though there are times when anger is morally justified. The two things that we should be willing to argue about are theology and politics. This isn’t about getting mad or letting your emotions get out of control. In fact, when we lose our cool and merely emote, we’re not arguing very well and we actually become less persuasive rather than more so. It usually escalates into a test of whose emotional intensity is strongest, rather than the strength of the arguments themselves.
Perhaps many Christians think arguing is bad because they can’t distinguish between a person and their ideas. Even for themselves, they can take it personally when someone is arguing against their ideas. But not arguing does make me a nice person. And the fact that I do argue about consequential things does not make me unloving. Nice people can be wrong, and mean people can be right. I can criticize a person’s ideas without criticizing the person. The challenge is to communicate my disagreement — to argue — in such a way that the person understands I disagree with their ideas, not them personally. Friends can and do argue over their disagreements, though it is most often the case that they are friends precisely because they do agree on so many things.
Finally, with regards to the criticism that I am “not fair and balanced” and that I am “close-minded and too biased against liberals,” I am perhaps guilty as charged. However, it is only because I have weighed the arguments on both sides and found the current expressions of modern liberalism deficient. I gave liberalism a fair hearing when I began to formulate my political philosophy and found it contrary to my Christian values. I am no longer struggling with moral equivalence between the left and the right. I would be close-minded and biased if I were unwilling to weigh arguments for liberalism. Having done so, I am a conservative precisely because I have found the arguments for liberalism unpersuasive.
Some Christians may claim, “Christians shouldn’t argue about politics” simply because they’re political liberals who are unwilling to actually engage in argument over their political views. Instead, they would rather attempt to stifle debate by taking the pseudo moral high ground, saying something like, “Truly spiritual Christians are above politics.”
That’s too bad. Christians can and should argue, especially about theology and politics — and hopefully in that order.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Frank Pastore is a radio talk-show host heard daily on KKLA in Los Angeles. Read his interview with CitizenLink.
(NOTE: Referral to Web sites not produced by Focus on the Family is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of the sites' content.)
College presidents seek debate on drinking age
By Justin Pope
Associated Press Writer / August 18, 2008
College presidents from about 100 of the nation's best-known universities, including Duke, Dartmouth and Ohio State, are calling on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18, saying current laws actually encourage dangerous binge drinking on campus.
The movement called the Amethyst Initiative began quietly recruiting presidents more than a year ago to provoke national debate about the drinking age.
"This is a law that is routinely evaded," said John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont who started the organization. "It is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory."
Other prominent schools in the group include Syracuse, Tufts, Colgate, Kenyon and Morehouse.
But even before the presidents begin the public phase of their efforts, which may include publishing newspaper ads in the coming weeks, they are already facing sharp criticism.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving says lowering the drinking age would lead to more fatal car crashes. It accuses the presidents of misrepresenting science and looking for an easy way out of an inconvenient problem. MADD officials are even urging parents to think carefully about the safety of colleges whose presidents have signed on.
"It's very clear the 21-year-old drinking age will not be enforced at those campuses," said Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of MADD.
Both sides agree alcohol abuse by college students is a huge problem.
Research has found more than 40 percent of college students reported at least one symptom of alcohol abuse or dependance. One study has estimated more than 500,000 full-time students at four-year colleges suffer injuries each year related in some way to drinking, and about 1,700 die in such accidents.
A recent Associated Press analysis of federal records found that 157 college-age people, 18 to 23, drank themselves to death from 1999 through 2005.
Moana Jagasia, a Duke University sophomore from Singapore, where the drinking age is lower, said reducing the age in the U.S. could be helpful.
"There isn't that much difference in maturity between 21 and 18," she said. "If the age is younger, you're getting exposed to it at a younger age, and you don't freak out when you get to campus."
McCardell's group takes its name from ancient Greece, where the purple gemstone amethyst was widely believed to ward off drunkenness if used in drinking vessels and jewelry. He said college students will drink no matter what, but do so more dangerously when it's illegal.
The statement the presidents have signed avoids calling explicitly for a younger drinking age. Rather, it seeks "an informed and dispassionate debate" over the issue and the federal highway law that made 21 the de facto national drinking age by denying money to any state that bucks the trend.
But the statement makes clear the signers think the current law isn't working, citing a "culture of dangerous, clandestine binge-drinking," and noting that while adults under 21 can vote and enlist in the military, they "are told they are not mature enough to have a beer." Furthermore, "by choosing to use fake IDs, students make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law."
"I'm not sure where the dialogue will lead, but it's an important topic to American families and it deserves a straightforward dialogue," said William Troutt, president of Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., who has signed the statement.
But some other college administrators sharply disagree that lowering the drinking age would help. University of Miami President Donna Shalala, who served as secretary of health and human services under President Clinton, declined to sign.
"I remember college campuses when we had 18-year-old drinking ages, and I honestly believe we've made some progress," Shalala said in a telephone interview. "To just shift it back down to the high schools makes no sense at all."
McCardell claims that his experiences as a president and a parent, as well as a historian studying Prohibition, have persuaded him the drinking age isn't working.
But critics say McCardell has badly misrepresented the research by suggesting that the decision to raise the drinking age from 18 to 21 may not have saved lives.
In fact, MADD CEO Chuck Hurley said, nearly all peer-reviewed studies looking at the change showed raising the drinking age reduced drunk-driving deaths. A survey of research from the U.S. and other countries by the Centers for Disease Control and others reached the same conclusion.
McCardell cites the work of Alexander Wagenaar, a University of Florida epidemiologist and expert on how changes in the drinking age affect safety. But Wagenaar himself sides with MADD in the debate.
The college presidents "see a problem of drinking on college campuses, and they don't want to deal with it," Wagenaar said in a telephone interview. "It's really unfortunate, but the science is very clear."
Another scholar who has extensively researched college binge-drinking also criticized the presidents' initiative.
"I understand why colleges are doing it, because it splits their students, and they like to treat them all alike rather than having to card some of them. It's a nuisance to them," said Henry Wechsler of the Harvard School of Public Health.
But, "I wish these college presidents sat around and tried to work out ways to deal with the problem on their campus rather than try to eliminate the problem by defining it out of existence," he said.
Duke faced accusations of ignoring the heavy drinking that formed the backdrop of 2006 rape allegations against three lacrosse players. The rape allegations proved to be a hoax, but the alcohol-fueled party was never disputed.
Duke senior Wey Ruepten said university officials should accept the reality that students are going to drink and give them the responsibility that comes with alcohol.
"If you treat students like children, they're going to act like children," he said.
Duke President Richard Brodhead declined an interview request. But he wrote in a statement on the Amethyst Initiative's Web site that the 21-year-old drinking age "pushes drinking into hiding, heightening its risks." It also prevents school officials "from addressing drinking with students as an issue of responsible choice."
Hurley, of MADD, has a different take on the presidents.
"They're waving the white flag," he said.
Associated Press Writer Barbara Rodriguez contributed to this report from Durham, N.C.
Combat Veterans From Recent Wars Are At Increased Risk Of Alcohol-Related Problems
Article originally published in Medical News Today on August 13, 2008
After returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan, younger service members and Reserve and National Guard combat personnel are more likely to begin heavy drinking, binge drinking, or other alcohol related problems. These findings are reported in a study published in the August 13 issue of JAMA.
Previous studies have suggested a strong link between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse. Additionally, several other psychological disorders are known to occur after stressful and traumatic events such as war. As alcohol is commonly used to help those cope with traumatic events, there is a high probability that military deployment is associated with increased rates of alcohol consumption or problem drinking. There have been reports from earlier conflicts that personnel have misused alcohol at high rates after deployment, but there is little information on patterns of alcohol use regarding the most current crop of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
To determine if deployment to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is linked to new-onset or changes in alcohol consumption, binge drinking behavior, or other alcohol related problems, Isabel G. Jacobson, M.P.H. (Naval Health Research Center, San Diego) and colleagues analyzed data from the Millennium Cohort Study. Baseline data were collected via questionnaires from 77,047 participants from July 2001 to July 2003, and 55,021 participants completed follow-up surveys from June 2004 to February 2006. A series of inclusion and exclusion criteria yielded a sample of 48,481 participants - 26,613 active duty and 21,868 Reserve or National Guard personnel. Of the total sample, 5,510 were deployed with combat exposures, 5,661 were deployed without combat exposures, and 37,310 did not deploy.
Jacobson and colleagues report that among Reserve or National Guard personnel who deployed with combat exposure, 8.8% developed new-onset heavy weekly drinking, 25.6% developed new-onset binge drinking, and 7.1% developed new-onset alcohol-related problems. Active-duty personnel had new-onset rates of 6.0%, 26.6%, and 4.8%, respectively. Members of the Reserve or National Guard who were deployed with combat exposure were more likely to develop all three drinking outcomes compared to their nondeployed counterparts. Specifically, these personnel with combat experience were found to be 63% more likely to experience onset of heavy weekly drinking and 63% more likely to experience alcohol-related problems than nondeployed personnel.
Deployed active-duty personnel were found to be 31% more likely than their nondeployed counterparts to develop new-onset binge drinking at follow-up. Though significantly less likely to report new-onset or changes in binge drinking or alcohol-related problems, women were found to be 1.2 times more likely to report new-onset heavy weekly drinking. In addition, the researchers found that personnel born after 1980 - younger soldiers - were at 6.7 times increased odds of new-onset binge drinking and 4.7 times increased odds of new-onset alcohol-related problems.
The authors conclude: "These results are the first to prospectively quantify changes in alcohol use in relation to recent combat deployments. Interventions should focus on at-risk groups, including Reserve/Guard personnel, younger individuals, and those with previous or existing mental health disorders. Further prospective analyses using … data [from this study group] will evaluate timing, duration, and [co-existing illnesses] of alcohol misuse and other-alcohol related problems, better defining the long-term effect of military combat deployments on these important health outcomes."
Alcohol Use and Alcohol-Related Problems Before and After Military Combat Deployment
Isabel G. Jacobson, MPH; Margaret A. K. Ryan, MD, MPH; Tomoko I. Hooper, MD, MPH; Tyler C. Smith, PhD, MS; Paul J. Amoroso, MD, MPH; Edward J. Boyko, MD, MPH; Gary D. Gackstetter, DVM, PhD, MPH; Timothy S. Wells, DVM, PhD, MPH; Nicole S. Bell, ScD, MPH JAMA(2008). 300[6]: pp. 663-675. Click Here to View Abstract
Written by: Peter M Crosta
Copyright: Medical News Today Published by permission of Medical News Today
Getting Older, Drinking Less, Study Finds August 7, 2008
Research Summary
Participants in this comprehensive, long-term health study generally drank less as they got older and later generations drank less than their predecessors, WebMD Health News reported Aug. 6.
Study subjects also were found to drink less beer and more wine as they got older, with that shift more pronounced for men than for women. Beer made up at least half of men's alcohol intake before they reached their mid-30s, but only about one-quarter by their mid-70s.
The study of residents of Framingham, Mass., included 50 years of data of 8,600 white adults, all of whom were born between 1900 and 1959 and were at least 28 years old when they began reporting in detail on their health and lifestyle habits.
The study found that heavier drinking gave way to moderate drinking as later generations' behaviors were analyzed. Yet it is uncertain as to whether these findings reflect national trends, since a study published earlier this year by different researchers suggested the opposite -- that alcoholism may be increasing among women born after 1953.
Researcher Yuqing Zhang, D.Sc., of the Boston University School of Medicine, said researchers did not attempt to determine why participants from each generation tended to drink less as they got older.
SAN FRANCISCO (BP)--Supporters of a proposed constitutional marriage amendment in California filed suit against the state attorney general July 29, charging that a new ballot title and summary is inflammatory and could lead voters to oppose the measure.
The title and summary -- the language voters see on the ballot when entering the voting booth -- was changed recently by California Attorney General Jerry Brown. A Democrat, Brown changed the title to read, "Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry" and the first sentence of the summary to read, "Changes California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry." The new ballot summary also says the amendment's fiscal impact would result in "potential revenue loss, mainly sales taxes, totaling in the several tens of millions of dollars" to state and local governments over the next few years. [Click here to read the full story]
Drinking games prove deadly to college students
Published: 7/7/08, 5:25 PM EDT
By AMY FORLITI
WINONA, Minn. (AP) - On the morning after the house party on Johnson Street, Jenna Foellmi and several other twentysomethings lay sprawled on the beds and couches. When a friend reached over to wake her, Foellmi was cold to the touch.
The friend's screams woke up the others still asleep in the house.
Foellmi, a 20-year-old biochemistry major at Winona State University, died of alcohol poisoning on Dec. 14, one day after she had finished her last exam of the semester. According to police reports, she had three beers during the day, then played beer pong - a drinking game - in the evening, and downed some vodka, too.
Foellmi's death was tragic, but typical in many ways. [Click here to read the full story]
Long-time California residents have experienced their share of earthquakes over the years, but perhaps they were rocked most on two days recently over the course of three weeks. These fault lines, however, ran not in the Earth’s crust but in the state’s highest court, and its citizens are still feeling the aftershocks.
The first quake came somewhat unexpectedly on May 15 as the state Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, granted homosexuals the legal right to “marry” in the Golden State, trampling underfoot the will of 61 percent of voters who approved a 2000 ballot measure on traditional marriage. [Click here to read the full story]
The Empty Promises of Casinos
Omaha World-Herald
4/14/2008
At best, destination casinos are in places that generally remain checkered destinations for daily living. This is worth remembering as Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick’s claim of 30,000 new construction jobs for three resort casinos appears to be crumbling.
An independent analysis done for the Globe says that as few as 4,000 to 5,000 jobs might be created. Even the Massachusetts Building Trades Council projects just 20,000 jobs. Just as important, it is unclear what casinos change. Take Atlantic City, N.J., Las Vegas and the state of Mississippi.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Atlantic City casino industry is in the midst of spending $20 billion to rehab its fading image as a Las Vegas wannabe.
Las Vegas casinos are in the midst of spending $35 billion to brighten their already blinding image. And the first thing Mississippi did after Hurricane Katrina was to make sure the Gulf Coast casinos reopened, changing all kinds of rules, including ones that let them be built on land instead of being constrained to structures floating on water.
Atlantic City, after three decades of having casinos, was described by The Economist as a place where “multimillion-dollar casinos are steps away from crime-ridden neighborhoods. A quarter of the 40,000 residents live below the poverty line.”
The Associated Press described it a year ago as a place where “a stone’s throw from the glittering, billion-dollar casinos, thousands of people live in grinding poverty in rundown houses surrounded by drugs and prostitutes. These are the neighborhoods that the state requires casinos to help by setting aside a portion of their revenue for development projects.”
It was exposed last year that New Jersey let the casinos take a significant portion of money supposedly meant to clean up such neighborhoods and funnel it back to their own projects. The New York Times wrote, “Atlantic City continues to grapple with blocks of dilapidated buildings and seamy motels that draw drug dealers and prostitutes, all within the shadows of towering, brightly lighted casinos.”
In Mississippi, the Washington Post wrote, “Nowhere has the rebound from Hurricane Katrina been gaudier than along Mississippi’s casino- studded coast.
“Even as the storm’s debris was being cleared, (Biloxi’s) night sky was lighted up with the high-wattage brilliance of the Imperial Palace, then the Isle of Capri, then the Grand Casino .... Yet in the wrecked and darkened working-class neighborhoods just blocks from the waterfront glitter, those lights cast their colorful glare over an apocalyptic vision of empty lots and scattered trailers that is as forlorn as anywhere in Katrina’s strike zone.”
This is despite those casinos racking up in 2007 a new record for revenues, nearly $3 billion.
Last fall, 24 ministers in the region said in a letter to state officials that “our recovery effort has failed to include a place at the table . . . for our poor and vulnerable.” Not to mention that Mississippi remains in the bottom five, according to statistics of the National Education Association, in per-pupil public school spending. Nevada’s casinos racked up a record $12.8 billion in revenues in 2007. But the Toronto Star says that “Nevada also leads in other areas, such as gun deaths, suicide and now home foreclosures. It has one of the worst public school systems in the United States. Bankruptcies are high. It ranks below average for the number without health insurance.”
According to the federal Corporation for National and Community Service, Las Vegas ranks 43rd out of 50 major metropolitan areas for its high school graduation rate, second to last for its college graduation rate and dead last for its volunteer rate.
The residents of Las Vegas are so disconnected that its volunteer rate of 14.4 percent is at least doubled by 25 other cities.
The Toronto Star quoted William Epstein, a social work professor at the University of Nevada- Las Vegas, as saying, “The state is intriguing. It’s very wealthy. Yet the services are near the bottom.”
There is little to suggest from the Atlantic City, Mississippi or Las Vegas experience with destination casinos that those at the bottom will rise up.
Derrick Z. Jackson
BostonGlobe
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Copyright (c) 2008 Omaha World-Herald 04/14/2008
Australia - Problem gambling a 'root cause of homelessness' (2)
Research has pointed to a link between problem gambling and homelessness. While the Federal Government has been quick to act on its election promise to address homelessness, there are calls for the Prime Minister to extend the action to include problem gambling. Social researchers say addiction to gambling is one of the root causes of homelessness and that Kevin Rudd needs to address it.
Mr Rudd initially went about examining homelessness with little fanfare but now that he is loudly trumpeting his intention to do something about the homeless problem, there are some who believe he should just as carefully examine one of the reasons behind it. Problem gambling has long been an area of debate in Australia, but it is an area that has not been examined closely since a Productivity Commission report in 1999. But research has pointed to a link between problem gambling and homelessness - put simply, somewhere between 15 and 20 per cent of the homeless population is there because of a gambling addiction.
Gabriela Byrne once had a costly addiction to poker machines but she now runs a service helping others with the same problem. She told ABC radio's The World Today about one of her current clients. "He worked very high up in the corporate industry. He had a beautiful home, a loving family. He lost millions of money to poker machines," she said.
His wife supported him for 15 years, close to 15 years. They're now divorced. "He, for many weeks, had to sleep in a hostel and on the streets, and now lives in a very, very small commission housing flat."
Ms Byrne says her current client is but one of many problem gamblers she has seen end up on the streets. And she is among a number of social workers and researchers calling for the Federal Government to add a wide-ranging investigation into problem gambling to its inquiry into homelessness.
Financial, family strains
Charles Livingstone, from Monash University's School of Health Sciences, says there is a link between the incidence of problem gambling and the rate of homelessness in the general community. "That's not to say that everyone who has a problem with gambling is going to become homeless," he said.
"But there's no doubt that anything which causes a dissolution of family life imposes extreme financial stress on individuals and families and so on is likely to have an impact on the rate of homelessness, and there is no doubt further that gambling falls into that category."
Dr Livingstone says an examination of problem gambling should be a high priority for Mr Rudd, given that such a study has not been carried out for nearly a decade. "If we were to re-examine the costs and benefits of gambling with ... another nine years or so of experience under our belts then we would have to start looking at a broader range of social issues than were examined in that inquiry," he said.
"These would include a more detailed understanding of the relationship between problem gambling and homelessness, between problem gambling and crime, between gambling and the break-up of families and so on."
Government inquiry needed
Dr Livingstone says there is one particular area of gambling the Federal Government needs to investigate. "There is no doubt that poker machines cause the overwhelming majority of problem gambling in Australia, and there are a number of reasons for that," he said.
"One of them is that poker machines are ubiquitous in most Australian states and territories, the only exception to that being WA where they're not allowed outside the casino.
"But in every other Australian state and territory, pokies proliferate in pubs and clubs and almost on every street corner in some places.
"So, what that means is you just can't get away from them, even if you're trying very hard not to play them, they are there and they're very hard to avoid. "
AUSTRALIA (Audio) - Gambling linked to homelessness - 29/01/2008
The Australian government has been quick act on some of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's key social concerns and now, there are calls for him to extend the action to include problem gambling. Now, the government is being told that there is a strong link between problem gambling and homelessness.
Presenter - Daniel Hoare Speaker - Gabreilla Byrne, gambling counsellor; Charles Livingstone from Monash University's school of health sciences.
ONDCP Launches Initiative to Combat Teen Prescription Drug Abuse January 24, 2008
Announcement
From:
White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)
National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign
P.O. Box 6000, Rockville, MD 20849-6000
Tel: (800) 666–3332 ONDCP contact form www.theantidrug.com
Washington, D.C. - The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) is launching its first major Federal effort to educate parents about teen prescription drug abuse. This national public awareness campaign will begin with advertising during this year's Super Bowl, and is ONDCP's first paid TV advertising targeting parents in nearly two years. [Click here to read the full story]
Health Effects of Alcohol Consumption
Arthritis
Increases risk of gouty arthritis
Cancer
Increases the risk of cancer in the liver, pancreas, rectum, breast, mouth, pharynx, larynx and esophagus
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
Causes physical and behavioral abnormalities in the fetus
Heart Disease
Raises blood pressure, blood lipids and the risk of stroke and heart disease in heavy drinkers. Heart disease is generally lower in light to moderate drinkers.
Hyperglycermia
Raises blood glucose
Hypoglycemia
Lowers blood glucose, especially for people with diabetes
Kidney Disease
Enlarges the kidneys, alters hormone functions, and increases the risk of kidney failure
Liver Disease
Causes fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis and cirrhosis
Malnutrition
Increases the risk of protein-energy malnutrition,; low intakes of protein, calcium, iron, vitamin A, vitamin C, thiamine, vitamin B6 and riboflavin, and impaired absorption of calcium, phosphorus, vitamin D and zinc.
Nervous Disorders
Causes neuropathy and dementia; impairs balance and memory
Obesity
Increases energy intake, but not a primary cause of obesity
USA Today's view: "Idea gains traction on campus, but evidence shows 21 law saves lives."
Article from USA Today, Page 12A
November 26, 2007
On most college campuses, only seniors and some juniors are old enough to consume alcohol legally. But you'd never notice that distinction on a Saturday night. Or, for that matter, Thursday night or Friday night.
Despite the minimum drinking age of 21, students of all ages imbibe, many to excess. The American Medical Association links drinking to 1,400 deaths, 500,000 injuries and 70,000 sexual assault cases on campuses every year.
This all suggests that the age 21 law has been about as successful at preventing underage drinking as Prohibition was at banning alcohol from society as a whole. So does that mean it's time to revert to 18? Supporters of the idea, which is gaining traction, make a number of logical arguments. But what sounds logical isn't necessarily prudent public policy.
The drinking age is a hot topic on campuses and beyond. In the past five years, four states have considered lowering the age, set at 21 in 1984 by Congress. Former college president John McCardell created an advocacy group, Choose Responsibility, that is pushing for age 18, coupled with an education and licensing program. Not surprisingly, more than 30,000 students have signed a pro-18 online petition.
The pro-18 argument goes like this: If 18-year-olds are allowed to vote and serve in the military, they ought to be able to drink. The age 21 minimum simply undermines respect for the law and prevents young people from learning to drink responsibly at home before they get to college. Once they arrive, the 21 law prevents them from imbibing sociably in restaurants or bars. Instead, students huddle in dorm rooms or fraternity and sorority houses, where they tend to binge on "forbidden fruit" and harm themselves or others.
These arguments are not without merit. The pro-18 case, however, runs aground over the inconvenient truth about highway deaths. In the early 1970s, many states lowered the drinking age to 18 to accommodate Vietnam War veterans, but when alcohol-related highway deaths rose, states went back to 21.
About 50 major studies point to the same conclusion: On average, traffic deaths drop by 16% when the drinking age goes from 18 to 21. Since 1984, about 25,000 lives have been saved, federal highway authorities estimate. While it's true that other safety measures, such as seat belts, save even more lives, that's not a reason for giving up the gains attributable to the drinking age.
Lowering the legal drinking age would undoubtedly make even more alcohol, purchased legally by 18-year-olds, available to younger teens, some of whom are just learning to drive. Inexperienced drivers and alcohol are a particularly dangerous mix.
Choose Responsibility's argument that 18-year-olds could be issued "drinking licenses" after completing alcohol education courses is also unconvincing. Would fake drinking licenses be any less rampant than fake IDs are now?
Rather than try to poke holes in leak-proof research, groups such as Choose Responsibility would be better off advising colleges how to deal effectively with a difficult issue, without either turning a blind eye or transforming campuses into police states.
Americans are entering a holiday season, Thanksgiving through New Year's Eve, during which 1,773 people — 247 of them under 21 — were killed in alcohol-related crashes a year ago. To be sure, the problem is far more complex than an arbitrary age limit, be it 18 or 21. But based on the best available evidence, lowering the drinking age would only increase the carnage.
Landmark study: Change for homosexuals is possible
Baptist Press
September 14, 2007
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--In what some are calling groundbreaking research, a new four-year study concludes it is possible for homosexuals to change their physical attractions and become heterosexual through the help of Christian ministries. The data was released Sept. 13 at a news conference in Nashville, Tenn., and is published in the new book, "Ex-Gays?" (InterVarsity Press) by psychologists Stanton L. Jones and Mark A. Yarhouse. Thirty-eight percent of the subjects followed in the study said they had successfully left homosexuality, while an additional 29 percent said they had had only modest successes but were committed to keep trying. In another significant finding, Jones and Yarhouse said attempts at conversion do not appear to be psychologically harmful. [Read more]
Get the Truth About the 21 Law
The following is an introduction found on a website sponsored by MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving).
While ALCAP does not agree with or support all of the positions held by MADD, the resources on this website are beneficial
in light of the debate now taking place in America that seeks to lower the legal drinking age from 21 years of age.
As the nation’s current debate on the 21 Minimum Drinking Age Law rages on, it’s easy to mistake opinions as facts. Here is where you can get the straight truth on why the law is important to you—regardless of your age—and how it saves lives.
You will also find information on how alcohol affects the teen brain, the realities of underage drinking, facts to common myths and a history of the drinking age law. There is also a wealth of information, resources and tips for parents, educators and communities on preventing underage drinking.
Arm yourself with the truth and then decide. [Click here to find all of the resources associated with this statement.]
Walking on the “Mild” Side: The burgeoning modesty movement
From the Ethics & Religious Liberties Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention Website
Overexposed is a word that comes to mind when considering young celebrities like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Nicole Richie. We see too much coverage of them in the news and not enough coverage on their bodies. But it’s not just Hollywood. Young women in general are looking a bit trashy these days... [Read more]
Top 9 Actual Causes of Preventable Death
About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by our Medical Review Board
Lifestyle choices or modifiable, behaviors are major causes of mortality in the United States. A lifestyle choice or modifiable behavior is something that a person has some control over whether or not he or she will do that behavior. In 2000 well over a third of all deaths in the United States could be attributed to a limited number of largely preventable behaviors and exposures including smoking, poor diet and physical inactivity and alcohol consumption. Changing these modifiable behaviors can increase a person's life expectancy or longevity and prevent early deaths. [Read more]
CASA’s 2007 Teen Survey Reveals America’s Schools Infested with Drugs; Popular Kids at Drug-Infested Schools Much Likelier to Get Drunk and Use Drugs
Washington, D.C., August 16, 2007 - Eleven million high school students (80 percent) and five million middle school students (44 percent) attend drug-infested schools, meaning that they have personally witnessed illegal drug use, illegal drug dealing, illegal drug possession, students drunk and/or students high on the grounds of their school according to the National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse XII: Teens and Parents, the twelfth annual back-to-school survey conducted by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.
For the first time, this year CASA sought to survey in depth the drug situation in America’s schools. The survey revealed that at least once a week on their school grounds, 31 percent of high school students (more than four million) and nine percent of middle school students (more than one million) see illegal drugs used, sold, students high and/or drunk. At least weekly, 17 percent of all high and middle school students (4.4 million) personally see classmates high on drugs at school.
Read the Statement by CASA Chairman Joseph A. Califano, Jr.
New survey shows most parents support sexual-abstinence programs
Washington, DC — The National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA) today released a new survey from Zogby International showing that when parents become aware of what abstinence education vs. comprehensive sex education actually teaches, support for abstinence programs jumps from 40% to 60%, while support for comprehensive programs drops from 50% to 30%. This sharp increase in support of abstinence education is seen across all political and economic groups. As federal and state lawmakers debate funding for sex education in public schools, this new survey offers a compelling look into what parents want for their children.
In casinos from coast to coast, in slot parlors from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Shore, at racetracks and in lotteries across the country, Americans will legally gamble away—that is, lose—nearly $90 billion this year.
How times change. A hundred years ago, gambling was a national vice almost universally outlawed. A mere 30 years ago, Americans could only gamble legally in Nevada and Atlantic City. Yet, since the early 1990s, state-sanctioned gambling has exploded. To read the full story, click here!
The Marlboro Journal of Medicine Cartoon Series
Alan Blum, MD, Professor, Gerald Leon Wallace Endowed Chair in Family Medicine and Director of The University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society recently teamed up with Matt Bors to develop a series of satirical cartoons that poke fun at the tobacco industry and the Food & Drug Administration for their hypocrisy concerning tobacco products. The first of these cartoons, originally published in The Birmingham News in June 2007, is published below with permission from Dr. Alan Blum. It is followed by an explanation of the events and actions addressed in the cartoon.
Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif) have introduced a bill (S.625 in the Senate and H.R. 1108 in the House of Representatives) that would provide the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with regulatory control over tobacco products but would not permit the FDA to ban the sale or promotion of cigarettes. The bill is likley to come up for a vote in July by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Dr. Alan Blum, Director the The University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society and a staunch critic of placing America's most lethal consumer product under the control of the same agency entrusted to ensure the safety of our medications and food, was invited to testify in opposition to the bill at the Committee's hearing earlier this year. Dr. Blum collaborated with cartoonist Matt Bors of Portland, Oregon, to shed light on the glaring inconsistencies of the bill and the strange bedfellows who are supporting it.
meant to make it more difficult for young people to acquire alcohol have significantly reduced drunk-driving deaths, according to a new study.
On most college campuses, only seniors and some juniors are old enough to consume alcohol legally. But you'd never notice that distinction on a Saturday night. Or, for that matter, Thursday night or Friday night.
With 946 supporting the sale of alcohol in the city and 498 opposing it, Geneva Mayor Wynnton Melton said the message was clear.
“I’m shocked, to tell you the truth. I’m not shocked at all that it went wet, but I’m shocked at the margin of victory and voter participation in a one-issue election,” Melton said. “The numbers are almost at a two-to-one ratio. It’s a very distinct message sent to the leadership of the City of Geneva that people feel strongly about this.”
The vote will have some tangible benefits for the town.
With the additional money from taxes and licenses, Melton estimated the city will see between $50,000 and $100,000 of additional annual revenue.