Casinos. Bad for your health?
Comments. Considerations. Questions.
By Kenneth Bagnell
Right off the top, for my own reason, I think I’ll confess: I’ve never gambled, not even buying a single raffle ticket. Sometimes I contribute the money but skip the ticket. My Nova Scotia parents taught me that. Why mention it? Because of a point I want to make: being a non-gambler doesn’t deny me my right to an opinion on the huge casino that Ontario’s Lottery and Gaming Corporation (backed by Toronto’s mayor) wants to open probably in downtown Toronto. I have a right to an opinion on it. After all, as we used to say about education: “Education is everybody’s business.” So is gambling, especially given a few of the numerous statistics related one way or another to its addictive and destructive power.
Consider this: in one of Canada’s so-called “have-not” provinces a few years ago, gamblers spent it’s said, in a single year, one and a half billion dollars, while their provincial tax revenue was just a bit over two billion. An expert research firm estimated that just under 50,000 of those gamblers were “problem gamblers”; 19,000 they estimated were addicts. Here’s a final figure related specifically to Toronto’s proposal: the American Research Council on Addictions claims that living within ten miles of a casino, increases a gambler’s chance of becoming addicted by 90 percent. Attention Toronto Mayor Rob Ford: who needs that in the neighborhood?
A recent proposal by a major corporate developer, would locate a huge project, with a casino, more or less at the foot of Yonge Street, nicely positioned for public transit access. (It’s much more tempting than boarding a bus for that long drive northward to Casino Rama, a bit beyond Orillia.) Still, if the Toronto deal proceeds, those in or near our city, who like to drive in order to lose their shirts, will find parking spaces for several thousand cars. It would include two office towers, a hotel, some other amenities, and of course, the strategically situated casino. (The final decision on its location awaits city hall’s will.) The entire project claims it will generate $50 million in city taxes, plus more in revenues, but no mention of less appealing aspects called losses. Not everybody likes it, a city columnist noting: “The beauty of this city is that it doesn’t need a casino, let alone want one.”
Of course. Many discerning people don’t like it either. Among them are members or the city’s board of health in particular, the medical officer himself. In a meticulous report, roughly 20 pages backed with professional opinion and scholarly footnotes, Dr. David McKeown has presented an analysis that makes the planned casino virtually lethal in its harmful potential. “A casino located anywhere in the GTA,” he says, “will likely increase problem gambling and associated health risks for Toronto residents, with greater impacts on closer communities. Decisions regarding a new casino in the GTA should consider the likely increase in problem gambling and associated health impacts.” This, coming not from a fire breathing moral zealot but a highly credible medical specialist, should give pause to the mayor, the gaming industry and, the developers who have drafted various proposals. If, that is, they have something other than total self-interest in mind.
There’s recent good news: a number of highly credible professionals vigorously oppose the casino, among them respected architects, urban scholars, senior economists and politicians of various perspectives. One is the esteemed U of T urban scholar Richard Florida, a PhD from Columbia, author of widely praised books, including The Rise of the Creative Class, now a senior academic at U of T’s esteemed Rotman School of Business. In a single sentence some months ago, he summed up his view on the proposed casino and casinos in general: “If you polled every urbanist and everyone who has studied urban development – Conservative, Liberal, NDP, right, left and centre — everyone would agree that casinos, as an economic development tool are an unmitigated disaster.” (I don’t know about you but I find the man rather candid.)
As I complete this column CBC Radio reports that three of Toronto’s respected former mayors – David Crombie, John Sewell and Arthur Eggleton – have just signed a joint letter condemning the casino proposal on grounds that it will increase poverty, addiction and crime by people “feeding their habit.” Some Toronto editorialists have been silent. But to its credit The Toronto Star has been resolute. Members of its editorial board apparently met with the chairman of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, heard his case in favor of the casino, but had the integrity and courage to write an editorial in opposition: “A casino,” The Star said, “amounts to a factory working day and night to separate players from their money….. There’s nothing sophisticated about thousands of suckers feeding coins into slot machines and there’s limited benefit to the community.” Yes. And strictly on the evidence, as the former mayors well know, one other thing is certain: human misery will follow the casino if it ever comes to Toronto.
January 30, 2013
30
All past blogs are archived on my website: your comments are welcome there: www.kennethbagnell.com. To email me: kbagnell@aol.com
http://www.horseshoe.com/info/cleveland/about.html
Notice the positive spin in the introduction of Cleveland’s new casino web site. Jobs, positive economic impact and tourism. What it fails to mention is the many lives it will ruin especially the inter city citizens of Cleveland. Made up primarily of unemployed, low income African Americans. I can say this with a great deal of certainty, that we will suffer similar circumstances if we go down the casino highway.
Finally, after reading my local paper in Collingwood, The Enterprise Bulletin (Sun Media), there has been a petition by the gaming industry (the Casinoization of Ontario)to put a casino in Collingwood and other targeted communities of the same population density. This movement, while highly controversial to say the least is targeting the tourism industry in the Blue Mountains area. My comment to the gaming industry and the Provincial Government is this: while tourism is booming in the area Friday and Saturday nights, who do you think will end up using the casino the remainder of the week? You got it, the ever growing unemployed, seasonal workers in Collingwood. Make way for the slot machines and roulette tables and forget about nature and the beauty of the great outdoors, you won’t have to leave your chair.
Halifax got a casino under the premiership of John Savage some years ago though no mention of building one was made as I recqll during the preceding election. I also recall it being said that tourists would be expected from the United States in fairly large numbers.
Now I hear no mention of tourists. The focus now seems to be upon upon local people. Various entertainments are held in the building to encourage people to go there. I believe that free bus rides for example have also been provided to take seniors to the casino. Whatever the revenue is that comes in , I understand that there have also been suicides ,broken homes ,unhappy .stressed and miserable people as other results.
On casinos: We have one is Sydney. The jobs it created does not in any way offset the misery it has visited upon us. I know personally seniors-=-the bulk of the players–who have lost everything to the casino. I know seniors who squander their old age pension monthly at the casino. I am a mild gambler (20 bucks normally) and I can tell you that the casino Sydney generates a consider amount of cash for the US company. It creates a very small economy here. It does little for the addicted. It puts little money into this economy. At the end of the day, one bag of money goes to the States, the other to Halifax. Gamblers are not sophisticated; they will continue to play even altho the chips have been changed in the machines and the machines are scarcely paying out at all. If you think that this is bad, go to Atlantic City: There are no winners there. You talk of poverty. Yes, if you were to examine the socio-economic stats, you would find that the bulk of the gamblers have less money and less education.
very good submit, i certainly love this web site, keep on it