TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/022591/0225140.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.8 KB | 120 lines

                                                                                LIVING, Page 78

The Rise of Teenage Gambling


A distressing number of youths are bitten early by the betting
bug

By RICARDO CHAVIRA/WASHINGTON


    Amid the throngs of gamblers in Atlantic City, Debra Kim
Cohen stood out. A former beauty queen, she dropped thousands
of dollars at blackjack tables. Casino managers acknowledged
her lavish patronage by plying her with the perks commonly
accorded VIP customers: free limo rides, meals, even rooms.
Cohen, after all, was a high roller. It apparently did not
disturb casino officials that she was also a teenager and --
at 17 -- four years shy of New Jersey's legal gambling age.

    Finally, Kim's father, Atlantic City detective Leonard
Cohen, complained to authorities. Kim was subsequently barred
from casinos. But by then the damage had been done. "She was
an addicted gambler," Cohen says of his daughter. Moreover, Kim
had squandered all her money, including funds set aside for
college. Officials at the five casinos where she gambled
claimed that her case was an anomaly.

    On the contrary, Kim's sad case is only too common. Gambling
researchers say that of the estimated 8 million compulsive
gamblers in America, fully 1 million are teenagers. Unlike Kim,
most live far from casinos, so they favor sports betting, card
playing and lotteries. Once bitten by the gambling bug, many
later move on to casinos and racetrack betting. "We have always
seen compulsive gambling as a problem of older people," says
Jean Falzon, executive director of the National Council on
Problem Gambling, based in New York City. "Now we are finding
that adolescent compulsive gambling is far more pervasive than
we had thought."

    Just 10 years ago, teenage gambling did not register even
a blip on the roster of social ills. Today gambling counselors
say an average of 7% of their case loads involve teenagers. New
studies indicate that teenage vulnerability to compulsive
gambling hits every economic stratum and ethnic group. After
surveying 2,700 high school students in four states, California
psychologist Durand Jacobs concluded that students are 2 1/2
times as likely as adults to become problem gamblers. In
another study, Henry Lesieur, a sociologist at St. John's
University in New York, found eight times as many gambling
addicts among college students as among adults.

    Experts agree that casual gambling, in which participants
wager small sums, is not necessarily bad. Compulsive betting,
however, almost always involves destructive behavior. Last fall
police in Pennsauken, N.J., arrested a teenage boy on suspicion
of burglary. The youth said he stole items worth $10,000 to
support his gambling habit. Bryan, a 17-year-old from
Cumberland, N.J., recently sought help after he was unable to
pay back the $4,000 he owed a sports bookmaker. Greg from
Philadelphia says he began placing weekly $200 bets with
bookies during his sophomore year in college. "Pretty soon it
got to the point that I owed $5,000," he says. "The bookies
threatened me. One said he would cut off my mother's legs if
I didn't pay." Still Greg continued to gamble. Now 23, he was
recently fired from his job after his employer caught him
embezzling.

    Why does gambling fever run so high among teens? Researchers
point to the legitimization of gambling in America, noting that
it is possible to place a legal bet in every state except Utah
and Hawaii. Moreover, ticket vendors rarely ask to see proof
of age, despite lottery laws in 33 states and the District of
Columbia requiring that customers be at least 18 years old.
"You have state governments promoting lotteries," says Valerie
Lorenz, director of the National Center for Pathological
Gambling, based in Baltimore. "The message they're conveying is
that gambling is not a vice but a normal form of
entertainment." Researchers also point to unstable families,
low self-esteem and a societal obsession with money. "At the
casinos you feel very important," says Rich of Bethesda, Md.,
a young recovering addict. "When you're spending money at the
tables, they give you free drinks and call you Mister."

    Efforts to combat teen problem gambling are still fairly
modest. Few states offer educational programs that warn young
people about the addictive nature of gambling; treatment
programs designed for youths are virtually nonexistent. In
Minnesota, where a study found that more than 6% of all youths
between 15 and 18 are problem gamblers, $200,000 of the
expected income from the state's new lottery will go toward a
youth-education campaign. That may prove to be small solace.
Betty George, who heads the Minnesota Council on Compulsive
Gambling, warns that the lottery and other anticipated legalized
gambling activities are likely to spur youth gambling.

    Security guards at casinos in Atlantic City and Nevada have
been instructed to be on the alert for minors. But it is a
daunting task. Each month some 29,000 underage patrons are
stopped at the door or ejected from the floors of Atlantic City
casinos. "We can rationally assume that if we stop 29,000, then
a few hundred manage to get through," says Steven Perskie,
chairman of New Jersey's Casino Control Commission. Commission
officials say they may raise the fines imposed on casinos that
allow customers under 21 to gamble.

    Counselors fear that little will change until society begins
to view teenage gambling with the same alarm directed at drug
and alcohol abuse. "Public understanding of gambling is where
our understanding of alcoholism was some 40 or 50 years ago,"
says psychologist Jacobs. "Unless we wake up soon to gambling's
darker side, we're going to have a whole new generation lost
to this addiction."