TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=91TT0396> <title> Feb. 25, 1991: The Rise Of Teenage Gambling </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991 Feb. 25, 1991 Beginning Of The End </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> LIVING, Page 78 The Rise of Teenage Gambling </hdr><body> 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." </body></article> </text>