Is Gambling the best bet for New Hampshire?

Con Issue Opinion By Jim Rubens, against expanded gambling:

The gambling revenues are overstated and will not solve our state budget problems:

• Casino tax revenues have not fixed budget problems in other states. Casino states have budget problems no less severe than New Hampshire’s and casino revenues are declining nationwide. In fact, racinos may become a tax drain in some states. Rhode Island legislators are considering using taxpayer dollars to buy a bankrupt race track casino there. Maryland passed a racino law and that state, too, is considering using taxpayer money to prop up two bankrupt racetracks - and casino developers have purchased licenses for only half the number of authorized slot machines.

• Of all states with legalized slot machines or casinos, everyone has either a sales or income tax, all but 6 have both.

• Gambling interests are overstating revenue projections. Slots revenue may not arrive in time to fix the budget deficit this biennium. First license and operating revenues would be received no earlier than about 24 months after a legalization vote (the typical elapsed time in the seven most recent racino states).

Gambling businesses may not be additive, they cannibalize other local businesses:

• Slot casinos of the type being proposed for New Hampshire may not benefit the state’s economy and simply cannibalize existing local businesses. A literature survey done for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston states, “[c]asinos that cater to a local market generally do not bring outside money into the economy … [and] may have no net ancillary economic impacts. Residents patronizing such casinos may simply substitute gambling for other goods and services.”

Gambling creates many negative social problems and increases crime rates:

• Multiple casino locations may force negative social and economic impacts on many New Hampshire communities. These impacts include: higher rates of gambling addiction, violent crime, domestic abuse, suicide, and increased welfare, social service and criminal justice costs.

• A 2006 study published in The Review of Economics and Statistics found that, by the fifth year after the introduction of a casino, host counties saw rates of robbery, aggravated assault, auto theft, burglary, larceny, and rape increase by an average of 10 percent. The casino-crime link has been shown in several additional studies, with the Review of Economics and Statistics study now used to assess casino impacts in most independent gambling cost-benefit analyses. Gambling advocates often cite older studies which use small sample sizes and less rigorous statistical methods and report no definite link between casinos and crime.
   
• Gambling addiction treatment fails to solve the problem created by casinos. Six casinos spread around the state would increase baseline pathological gambling disorder by about 1 percent of New Hampshire’s adult population. Only 7-12 percent of gambling addicts even attempt to access available addiction treatment services. About half or more of revenue at a typical slots casino is extracted from problem and pathological gamblers, meaning that the state budget would be built around the continuous creation of new gambling addicts to replace those who gamble themselves and their families into bankruptcy.
   
• Slots are several times more addictive and harmful than existing New Hampshire gambling. Gambling addiction onset is over 3 times faster with slot machines compared with table games, lotteries, or betting on animal racing. Here are the intake statistics from the Rhode Island Gambling Treatment Program: 69% slots, 10% horses or dogs, 9% table games, 8% lottery. Through frequent display of “near misses,” slot machines are designed to make players think that they are winning 2 to 5 times more than in reality. Recent brain science shows how these near misses promote gambling addiction.