The B.C. Lottery Corp. wants to establish a second casino in the capital region, and Victoria has won the right to host the new casino. Mayor Lisa Helps called it “a win for everybody.”
Well, not quite. We hear a lot about gambling’s few winners, but casinos depend on the many losers for their profits. That’s OK for people for whom losing a few dollars, or even a few hundred dollars, is an affordable form of entertainment. It’s devastating, though, for compulsive gamblers who lose all the money they have, and more.
Helps says the city is not in the business of legislating morality.
“If we focus on only the problems that drinking or gambling have, then we miss probably 99 per cent of the people who just go into casinos to see a show, have a meal, have a good time and go home,” she said.
But it’s not one per cent of British Columbians who are at risk of gambling addiction — it’s 11.2 per cent, according to a 2014 B.C. government study. For 7.9 per cent, the risk is low, but for 3.3 per cent of British Columbians, the risk is moderate to severe.
Never mind the statistics. Let’s talk about people.
The sad story of Elfriede Lippa was told in the Times Colonist last weekend. She was living in her mortgage-free condo and had a comfortable nest egg of cash — until she developed a gambling habit. She gambled away her savings, her real-estate equity and even her pension cheques, to the tune of nearly $300,000. She lives in a long-term-care home now, 91 years old and bankrupt.
She’s just one of the small minority of gamblers who develop an addiction, right? But it seems problem gamblers contribute a highly disproportionate amount to government gambling revenues.
A 2013 University of Lethbridge study showed that 40 to 50 per cent of Alberta’s gaming revenues came from gambling addicts. It is reasonable to assume B.C. figures would not be substantially different.
It’s not a win for everybody. It’s dirty money.
Articles about Lippa and the new casino generated a lot of mail to the Times Colonist.
One capital region man wrote of being told by his boss that, because of budget cutbacks, his contract would not be renewed.
“Six hours later, my wife called to tell me she had lost our property to a money lender and had ‘other’ problems … She had taken the bank cards and the titles to our property, gone to a money lender to fund her gambling habit. Over the course of a year, she lost approximately $1.5 million — my (our) life savings.
“I am now 62 years of age, no job, no income and three young children to raise.”
Victoria’s share of gambling revenues from the new casino are estimated to be $1.8 million to $2.5 million a year, about what Lippa and this man’s wife lost to gambling.
In a letter to the editor, Kelly Orr tells of a senior citizen who works at three housekeeping jobs because she lost $400,000 to the View Royal Casino, and of another senior friend who lost $250,000.
A woman from the Lower Mainland told of learning that her mother, who was undergoing treatment for breast cancer, was $250,000 in debt, including a $200,000 mortgage on a home that had been paid for. She had maxed out several credit cards, owed friends for loans and was years behind in her property taxes.
The mother refused to acknowledge her problem, and pushed her family away. Mother and daughter have not spoken for a year. The woman has lost her house.
So why don’t compulsive gamblers just stay away from casinos?
The Addictive Behaviours Laboratory at the University of Calgary says there’s a link between electronic gambling machines — most casinos’ stock in trade — and gambling addiction. The short time between the bet and the outcome poses a greater risk for addiction than other forms of gambling.
“For example, a gambler playing an EGM will know if he or she has won within a few seconds,” says the lab’s study report, “while lottery players may have to wait several days or weeks to know if they have won.”
A man from the Interior wrote about “the sight, smell, sound, touching the machine, the win — it’s the only place I want to be, sitting there … playing $100 after $100 in the machine, losing three or four thousand a night, sometimes more. And if I won, I would stay and play and lose it all back.”
“I have never been addicted to anything in my life — not drugs, alcohol, smoking … but this, I just can’t shake it.
“Now I just sit at home wanting to die. Soon I will have no money. And I don’t care.”
The province shares its gambling revenues with charities and municipalities, but it keeps the vast majority of it — almost $1 billion a year. But that revenue comes at great cost.
Perhaps intervention is needed for governments addicted to gambling revenues.
