Educating the Masses
This is September, so it’s Responsible Gaming Education Month. You can read all about it in American Gaming Association’s monthly column by Joe Maloney on page 10. The program started as just week-long and was recently expanded to a full month. Each year, the AGA adds more to the program to make it more valuable and understandable for members of the industry, and of course for our players.
But recently, there’s been a divide in the field of problem gambling. Education isn’t what some of these groups want anymore; they want treatment for those afflicted by problem gambling. While education is easy, treatment is difficult.
Many years ago, researchers identified that people afflicted with problem gambling generally are also addicted to other things—alcohol, drugs or sex being the main culprits. So it does little good to just treat one of those addictions while ignoring the others. But of course, combining treatments can create more problems than it addresses.
When I went to the first conference put on by the National Center for Responsible Gaming (now International Center) in 1999, I was overwhelmed by the neuroscience being presented—which parts of the brain were involved in addictions, how they were triggered, why do certain synapses occur at different times, etc. For someone who flunked chemistry in college, this was a challenge for me.
But truth be told, that was the logical place to start. Remember, research into problem gambling barely existed at that time. There were some wildly twisted studies conjured up by several anti-gaming advocates, but no peer-reviewed, truly objective academic examinations that would get to the root cause of problem gambling.
The ICRG has been conducting these studies since it was formed almost 30 years ago. It has developed a deep library of academic information that has stood the test of time.
Given the difficulty in treating true problem gamblers—and study after legitimate study has confirmed that less than 2 percent of people are subject to addictive gaming issues—doesn’t it make sense to try to educate players before they become problem gamblers? But how do you reach them?
Yes, most casinos have brochures discussing the warning signs of problem gambling and how to deal with them, but how many people actually pick up those brochures, which most of the time are stacked among other brochures proclaiming the benefits of joining the players club? Training your staff to recognize the signs of a problem gambler and how to approach them makes more sense.
Many folks are rightly concerned about the rapidly expanding “screen gambling” where people can easily make wagers on their mobile phones, tablets or even their smart TVs. What makes that doubly dangerous is the role illegal gambling plays in this scenario. Offshore sportsbooks, illegal online casinos and misclassified sweepstakes sites offer little to no protection for the problem gambler. And ever-increasing taxes and regulations on the legal sites, which lead to worse odds for savvy players on those sites, actually push problem gamblers to the black market.
Right now, there is too much diversity and too many different approaches to educating gamblers, which makes it hard to reduce the number of problem gamblers. The ICRG research is starting to pinpoint the triggers for problem gamblers. Once we have a grasp on what needs to be done to prevent the development of problem gamblers, the industry needs to unite around best practices.
Case in point is the current dispute over 1-800-GAMBLER. The treatment number is owned by the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, and a deal was struck three years ago to share that number across multiple jurisdictions. But technical problems and now a negotiation to renew that agreement have made the number worthless. It helps no one, most importantly the problem gambler.
Too many gaming companies have responsible gambling programs that are vastly different from other companies and also veer far from the accepted ways to approach the issue. Some companies don’t share good results when they are proven success stories. Some actually consider a good result in this field as proprietary information and refuse to let other industry participants know what works and what doesn’t in their experience.
It’s time to stop the infighting among the RG organizations, the casino companies and the online sportsbooks and gaming sites. It’s time to come together for the good of the players and the industry.
