Articles about casinos and gambling

A good explanation for why electronic "bingo" is really slot machines.

Discussions and editorials about the societal costs of gambling

Here's a very personal 2008 story about gambling and the elderly. Here's a 2014 story detailing how casinos intentionally target the elderly; how from every busload they try to "find a couple of them that they can take for all they're worth".

Here's Elaine Willman's 2006 essay entitled The Great Casino Camouflage, handed out to the DeKalb County Board in September 2015. Willman outlines how casinos and tribal government sometimes sneak up on communities, though by the time the essay was published most communities had a pretty good idea of what was coming. She also writes

Local elected officials are ill-equipped, unprepared and loathe to ever disagree or interfere with "economic development"

A 2013 article from Forbes suggesting that casinos are not good for business: As Native American Casinos Proliferate, The Social Costs of the Gambling Boom Are Ignored

A sad story by a casino neighbor in San Bernardino.

Casino-related quotes by John Warren Kindt, UIUC.

John Kindt in 2013 on the special problems of 24-hour casinos in Illinois (which is what the PBPN wants to operate)

A 2013 column from Crain's Chicago Business, contributed by John Kindt: 24-hour casinos a bad bet for Illinois. In the column Kindt states straight up:

Slot machines are job killers.

A 2009 anti-casino editorial from the Toledo Blade.

Ten Problems Casinos Cause for problem gamblers, from Graton Casino Crime Watch.

A PolitiFact analysis of an anti-casino ad suggesting Nevada is #1 in unemployment, crime, divorce and foreclosure. It turns out Nevada lost the #1 spot in crime back in 2009 (though they're still close), but the other three are correct.

Jeff Benedict's articles about thefts resulting from gambling addiction and about how gambling on credit is easy to do, despite being illegal.

From Bernard P Horn's Is There A Cure For America's Gambling Addiction?

US Courts say casinos have no "duty of care" towards compulsive gamblers (2011)

Legal References

25 CFR Part 150: Federal laws on land-into-trust acquisitions

Scientific Papers and Reports

John Warren Kindt, 2003, Diminishing or Negating the Multiplier Effect: The Transfer of Consumer Dollars to Legalized Gambling: Should a Negative Socioeconomic "Crime Multiplier" be Included in Gambling Cost/Benefit Analyses?. From the Introduction:

This analysis reviews whether the logical extension of the socio-economic costs caused by pathological gambling should include a negative socio-economic (i.e., "crime") multiplier in gambling cost/benefit analyses. Traditional economic theory posits that normal consumer spending benefits the economy by more than just the amount spent, as that money is reinvested in the economy. Arguably however, consumer dollars diverted into gambling dollars have a diminished economic multiplier effect. The contention is that added to this diminished economic multiplier, there should be a' socio-economic "crime" multiplier--due to the unique socio-economic costs inherent in state-sanctioned gambling activities.

John Warren Kindt, 2009, Amazon.com page for the book Gambling with Crime, Destabilized Economies, and Financial Systems.

John Warren Kindt, 2012, order page for the book The Gambling Threat to National and Homeland Security: Internet Gambling.

An NCJRS study from 2001 found that casinos do indeed bring significantly more bankruptcies, though results for some other social ills were mixed: Effects of Casino gambling on Crime and Quality of Life in New Casino Jurisdictions, by Grant Stitt.

A 1999 study by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center (Gerstein et al), suggested that the problem-gambler revenue fraction was around 15% (p 34). But this number relied on gamblers' recollection of past losses during phone interviews, and the study itself points out that some of the reported numbers suffered from a "lack of realism". The numbers also mixed casino gambling with lower-stakes lotteries and horse racing.

The 2004 Ontario study of problem gamblers (Williams and Wood). In this study, gamblers entered their wins and losses into diaries, completed daily. The conclusion (p 40) was that, on average, 30% of casino table-game revenue came from problem gamblers and a whopping 60% of slot-machine revenue came from problem gamblers.