Atlantic City Gambling

Some title having to do with gambling

Some people are for it, some are against it, but either way you cannot ignore it. Gambling is everywhere nowadays. It expands all the way from NCAA basketball tournaments, to your state lottery, and even to your local bingo game. Some people claim that gambling causes numerous problems for those who participate in it. Some of these problems include addiction, social, and economic issues. All of these problems have various harmful side effects. However, not all of these participants are of legal gambling age. Therefore some would argue that lowering the legal age of gambling would be beneficial.

Addiction is seen everywhere in the world today. Almost every celebrity in the media has some sort of addiction, and maybe even you and I do too. But is it necessarily one’s fault when a person becomes addicted to their product? Addictions to gambling did not start with legalized gambling.

As we can see, even in states with no legal gambling, 41 percent said they made a bet of some kind during 1974. Many of these did nothing more than make a casual bet with friends, but 24 percent of this population engaged in some kind of legal commercial gambling, and 9 percent bet illegally. (Kallick-Kaufmann 158)

People were betting even decades before it became legal. Gambling, unlike prohibition was not legalized because people with addictions to it wanted to continue. Goodman tells us this, “The rush to legalize casino gambling was not the result of any popular drive for more gambling in America. GET REST OF QUOTE!!” (58). Sometimes government feels a need to increase a product to better themselves. This was not the case with gambling, yet it happened anyway. “judged by dollars spent, gambling is now more popular in America than baseball, the movies, and Disneyland – combined.” (Haley 38). Gambling suddenly grew overnight and it was hard for anyone to ignore it. People were going out two times a week to play in their local lottery, while others were taking weekend trips to the casino. Lotteries became the easiest and quickest way to make it big. “According to [journalist] Walter Cronkite, the legalization of gambling means that �a nation once built on a work ethic embraces the belief that it’s possible to get something for nothing.’” (Haley 25). The American dream is to become wealthy and this was giving citizens a shot at it. When only betting a dollar or two a week people seem to forget exactly how much money they are putting into this �dream’.

Michael Rose, chairman and CEO of the Promus Companies, the parent corporation of the Harrah’s Casinos Company, readily agrees that lotteries thrive on the poor. But casinos are different, Rose told a national meeting of state legislators in 1994 –casinos, he claimed, attract the wealthy. (Goodman 41)

Everybody wanted to be a part of it. Despite all this evidence saying that gambling is harmful, most knew how to control their money. The public was aware of how much disposable income they had to spend on casinos.

The controversies that arise concern who exactly is losing all the money and what possible behavioral problems are being created by this increase. Are there more problem and addicted gamblers? Are more under-age people gambling? And if there are more social problems, what are the costs and who is paying for them?

Proponents will often acknowledge that there are potential problems, but they then to see them as manageable. Gambling industry leaders usually describe their ventures as “entertainment” or a benign form of taxation – sometimes referring to the money people lose as “a tax only on the willing.” They counter accusations that they are benefiting disproportionately from the gambling losses of the poor by citing statistics that purport to show that most of the betting is being done by people who have more money and more education. A 1992 Kansas Lottery Annual Report, for example, describe that state’s typical player as one who has �at least some college or post-high school education and is a member of a $20,000-plus family.’(Goodman 37-38)

Even while adding in the part of society that was spending a lot of their weekly paycheck on the lottery, there still was not enough