Until recently, the legalization of gambling has proceeded apace with little consideration of the potentially negative impacts that gambling can have on individuals, families and communities. In the 1990s, however, prevalence surveys have become an essential component in the establishment and monitoring of gambling legalization in the United States and internationally (Volberg & Dickerson 1996). This study, funded by the Oregon Gambling Addiction Treatment Foundation, examines the extent of gambling and problem gambling in Oregon in 1997 and compares these findings to similar studies conducted elsewhere in the United States.
The main purpose of this study is to establish a baseline measure of the prevalence of gambling-related problems among the adult population in Oregon. An additional purpose of this study is to identify the types of gambling causing the greatest difficulties for the citizens of Oregon. The results of this study will be useful in documenting the impact of legal gambling on the citizens of the State of Oregon. The results will also contribute to the formulation of statewide policy with regard to legal gambling in Oregon.
This report is organized into several sections for clarity of presentation. The Introduction includes a definition of the terms used in the report while the Methods section addresses the details of conducting the survey. The next four sections detail findings from the survey in the following areas:
· gambling in Oregon
· prevalence of problem gambling in Oregon
· comparing non-problem and problem gamblers
· comparing two measures of problem gambling
The report concludes with a summary, a review of the activities that other states have undertaken in response to the issue of problem gambling and recommendations for the future.
Background1
As in many other states, the modern development of legal gambling in Oregon began in the mid-1980s. Although casino gambling is prohibited in Oregon, an amendment to the state constitution was passed in 1984 to permit the state to operate a lottery with the proceeds earmarked for education and economic development. Since its inception, the games offered by the Oregon Lottery have grown to include scratch tickets and break-open games, several lotto games and the nation's only sports lottery, Sports Action.
In 1992, the Oregon Lottery received approval to operate video poker. This approval included a measure directing that 3% of gross revenues from video poker be returned to the counties' mental health departments to establish treatment programs for problem gamblers. Counties received a percentage of these revenues proportional to their video poker spending. There are strict controls on the location of these machines as well as the size of wagers and jackpots. Establishments where video poker is permitted must have a license to sell alcoholic beverages and there is a limit of six machines per establishment (increased from the initial limit of five machines). The maximum bet is $2 and the maximum jackpot is $600. There are now approximately 8,800 video poker machines located at 1,800 establishments throughout the State of Oregon. Gross revenues from lottery sales in Oregon in 1996 were $486 million with 73% coming from video poker. Video poker has strong supporters among retailers whose commissions on video poker machines were $119 million in FY 1995.
In addition to the state lottery, Oregon has two commercial horse tracks, one located in Portland and the other in Salem, as well as one commercial greyhound track in Portland. Racing events are regulated by statute and overseen by the Oregon Racing Commission. In addition, there are 19 off-track betting (OTB) outlets in the state, which offer parimutuel wagering on races held elsewhere in the United States. Parimutuel handle in Oregon for 1996 was $111 million, which generated approximately $1.6 million in taxes (calculated as 1.5% of handle).
Charitable gambling, including bingo and raffles, has existed in Oregon for many years and is overseen by the Department of Justice. Bingo and raffle sales in 1996 were approximately $83 million, which generated approximately $9 million in revenues to their sponsoring charities as well as $700,000 in taxes to the State of Oregon. In addition to state-regulated gambling, Oregon also permits commercial card rooms to operate if approved by local voters. Since these operations are overseen locally, there are no statewide statistics available for this activity. Furthermore, all nine of the federally-recognized tribes in Oregon have negotiated Class III gaming compacts with the state although only six tribes have opened gaming centers to date. All of these centers are on reservation land and all are tribally owned although some of the centers are operated by professional management firms. Games permitted at the Indian Gaming Centers include video lottery games, blackjack, keno and off-track wagering as well as card and dice games.
The introduction of video poker in Oregon sparked numerous protests and legal challenges. One lawsuit, filed by Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon in 1994 charged that locating the video poker machines in age-restricted establishments made them into casinos, which are illegal in Oregon. While the suit was eventually overturned, the unintended consequence was to cut off funding for problem gambling treatment programs in Oregon. This is because the court ruled that setting aside funds for treatment programs from video poker revenues violated the constitutional amendment that required all lottery revenues to be dedicated to economic development. After a hiatus during which the problem gambling treatment programs received no funding, legislative action was taken to finance these programs from the general fund rather than using video poker revenues.
In recent sessions, there has been serious debate in the Oregon Legislature concerning the state's dependence on lottery earnings to fund education and economic development programs. Revenues to the state from the lottery have grown from $59 million in 1986 to $550 million in 1996. While some believe that state-sponsored gaming is a harmless entertainment and a simple substitute for taxation, others question whether the state has come to rely too heavily on this revenue source. Gambling revenues now account for 9% of the current state budget.
Legislative actions to curb the activities of the lottery include curtailing promotional advertising for traditional lottery games as well as bills to eliminate video poker altogether, to cut commissions to retailers and to require that a larger proportion of retailers' revenues come from food and beverage sales than is presently allowed. These actions have come in the face of simultaneous pressures to expand legal gambling in Oregon to include video slot machines. Proponents of video slot machines believe that their implementation is necessary to enable the state to compete with the Indian gaming centers.
While there has been heated debate about the state's reliance on gambling, the Oregon Legislature did provide for problem gambling treatment and education services at the time video poker was authorized. Although the original legislation called for 3% of gross lottery revenues to be spent on services for problem gamblers, the legislature later changed this approach and substituted an allocation process. Based on prior expenditures, the legislature now allocates $4 million per biennium for problem gambling services.
When funding for problem gambling services was established, the revenues were distributed to county mental health agencies through the Association of Oregon County Mental Health Programs (AOCMHP). AOCMHP contracts for independent data collection and program evaluation services. Additionally, AOCMHP has started to provide training for mental health and alcohol and drug abuse treatment professionals as well as gambling addiction counselors. There are now 26 programs throughout the state that receive funding to address the issue of problem gambling, including education and outreach as well as treatment services and a 24-hour helpline that handles several thousand calls each year.
Since video poker became operational in 1993, the number of Gamblers Anonymous meetings around the state has grown from three to over 30. Approximately 1,000 individuals have entered the state-subsidized treatment programs since January 1995. The majority of these problem gamblers (81%) have gambled primarily on video poker and they have an average gambling debt of $16,000 which is more than half the average annual income of this group.
In 1996, Governor Kitzhaber convened a 14-member task force to investigate the role played by gambling in the state. While the task force recommended that a prevalence survey be carried out to determine the number of problem gamblers in Oregon, the state government has not taken any action in this direction. Instead, the survey reported here was funded by grants from the Oregon Lottery, Spirit Mountain Foundation and the Oregon Restaurant Foundation through the Oregon Gambling Addiction Treatment Foundation (OGATF).
Defining Problem and Pathological Gambling
Since the 1970s, legalized gambling has become a popular recreational pastime throughout North America. In 1974, the first, and only, national survey of gambling in the United States found that 68% of the adult respondents had at some time wagered on one or more types of legal or illegal gambling (Kallick-Kaufmann 1979). In the 1980s and 1990s, studies in different states have found lifetime gambling participation rates that range from a low of 64% in Mississippi to a high of 92% in New Jersey (Volberg 1994c, 1997a). The majority of people who participate in legal gambling are social gamblers who gamble responsibly, for entertainment and to socialize with friends and family.
The term problem gambling has been used in different ways. The term is sometimes used to refer to individuals who fall short of the diagnostic criteria for pathological gambling but are assumed to be in a preliminary stage of this progressive disorder (Lesieur & Rosenthal 1991). The term has also been used to refer to individuals who lose excessive amounts of money through gambling, relative to their income, although without reference to specific difficulties that they may experience (Rosecrance 1988). The National Council on Problem Gambling uses this term to indicate all of the patterns of gambling behavior that compromise, disrupt or damage personal, family or vocational pursuits (National Council on Problem Gambling 1997).
Pathological gambling lies at one end of a spectrum of problem gambling and was first recognized as a psychiatric disorder in 1980 (American Psychiatric Association 1980). Recent changes have been made to the psychiatric criteria for pathological gambling to incorporate empirical research that links pathological gambling to other addictive disorders like alcohol and drug dependence. The essential features of pathological gambling are a continuous or periodic loss of control over gambling; a progression, in gambling frequency and amounts wagered, in the preoccupation with gambling and in obtaining monies with which to gamble; and a continuation of gambling involvement despite adverse consequences (American Psychiatric Association 1994).
In prevalence surveys, individuals are categorized as problem gamblers or probable pathological gamblers on the basis of their responses to the questions included in the South Oaks Gambling Screen (see Appendix A for a discussion of the methods used to assess problem and pathological gambling in the general population). The term probable distinguishes the results of prevalence surveys, where classification is based on responses to questions in a telephone interview, from a clinical diagnosis. Respondents scoring three or four out of a possible 20 points on the South Oaks Gambling Screen items are classified as "problem gamblers" while those scoring five or more points are classified as "probable pathological gamblers." In prevalence surveys conducted since 1990, a distinction is also made between "lifetime" and "current" problem and probable pathological gamblers.
Lifetime problem and probable pathological gamblers are individuals who have, at some time in their lives, met the South Oaks Gambling Screen criteria for problem or pathological gambling. Current problem and probable pathological gamblers are individuals who have met these criteria in the past year. Not all lifetime problem and probable pathological gamblers meet sufficient criteria to be classified as current problem and probable pathological gamblers. For example, a middle-aged individual who experienced significant gambling-related difficulties in youth but no longer has such difficulties would be referred to as a lifetime problem gambler.
1 Information in this section was obtained from several sources including Mapes (1997), North American Gaming Report (1997), Suo (1997) and Whittemore & Baumgartner (1996) as well as Paul Potter of Project Stop and Thomas Moore of Herbert & Louis.
