High rollers, big losers
Area casinos have exacted a terrible toll from some local gamblers, and the state has done practically nothing to treat people who get hooked
By ANDREW Z. GALARNEAU
NEWS NIAGARA BUREAU
11/27/2005
Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News
Video poker machines line a hall in Ontario's Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort. Anti-gambling activists note rise of gambling addiction as more casinos open.
Associated Press
"Ninety-six or 97 percent of the population can readily handle gaming as a pastime. It's those who can't that are beginning to proliferate."
Mark Farrell, Amherst town justice, on problem gamblers
NIAGARA FALLS - If you were being swept toward the brink of Niagara Falls and your feet suddenly caught on a crack in the limestone, would you call that lucky?
A 47-year-old Buffalo accountant gambled away several thousand dollars in the Seneca Niagara Casino on March 19, 2003. He wrote a goodbye note and stepped into the Niagara River.
Authorities never named the man, but investigators said he had lost more than $600,000 in Ontario's Casino Niagara, in addition to his Seneca losses.
Cameras recorded the accountant's rescue. Otherwise, he would have been just another invisible mark on the balance sheet of the region's plunge into casino gambling.
Politicians and casino owners boast about casino benefits. About 2,400 people have jobs at the Seneca Niagara Casino, 900 more at its Allegany cousin. A casino planned for Buffalo is expected to create another 1,000 jobs.
State and local governments are sharing a piece of the action. The Niagara Falls and Salamanca casinos generated $57 million for them in 2004, with one-fourth of that going to the cities.
But behind the casino glitz, there is a seamier side of gambling, one where costs are harder to measure, but no less real.
• Four out of 100 gamblers flooding through the casino doors will become addicted, recent research suggests, and those addictions often lead to bankruptcy or suicides, hurting families and businesses. Living within 10 miles of a casino nearly doubles your odds of developing a gambling problem, according to a recent study from the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions.
• Crime rates haven't risen locally, but opponents say casinos can change a community's moral climate. Problem gamblers are more likely to steal from friends or businesses, drive drunk or attempt suicide when they lose.
• Bankruptcy cases in Western New York skyrocketed in 2005. Although much of the increase was driven by filers determined to beat the introduction of a stricter federal law, bankruptcy lawyers also say more gamblers are coming into their offices as casinos open nearby.
"The industry would like you to think that there are no such costs because you can't meet the burden of proof, to tie it specifically to the casino," said Edward Morse, a Creighton University professor who wrote a book on the economic and social impacts of gambling.
"I think we're getting to the point where people are starting to ask these hard questions about what really are the costs."
Bankruptcy lawyer Jeffrey Freedman has seen the price people pay firsthand.
"As more ways to gamble open up," he said, "more and more people have gambling problems."
"I wanted to kill myself'
The accountant from Buffalo on the brink of Niagara Falls is but one example of gambling's dark side. Freedman has seen many more.
Gamblers forge a spouse's name, or a friend's, on a credit application.
Parents mortgage their paid-off home to cover a child's losses.
A wife gambles secretly until her husband has to cash out his pension to pay her debt.
"A husband and wife will come in here, and the wife will announce that she's got $50,000 in gambling debt - and the husband's ready to have a heart attack because he has no clue," Freedman said.
"Young adults will rob their own parents and sell stuff just for gambling," he said.
The debts of secret gamblers tear apart families with a ferocity "you just don't see in regular cases," he said.
Take the situation of Tony, who told his story on the condition of anonymity.
He was 12 when he started playing cards for money. He graduated to holding games in his parents' garage, then moved up to the Native American casinos.
He married at 21. By 22, he had a gambling addiction that drove him to the tables for 12-hour stretches, until he had blown through $10,000.
It also drove him to the brink of the Niagara River. He described hitting bottom - after losing $7,000.
"I wanted to kill myself," he said. "I was right by the Niagara River."
He called his wife instead, and she persuaded him to get help.
At 23, he said he is a recovering gambling addict - and will be for the rest of his life. He avoided bankruptcy, but is working 70 hours a week as a steelworker and in other jobs to pay his debts. He relapsed a few months ago as he counted out a cash drawer at the end of one work shift.
The stack of money in his hands made him feel like he did back then, with a 4-inch thick wad of bills, playing blackjack for $400 a hand, tipping the drink girls $25 chips.
"I loved being a big shot, people watching me," he said.
Judge tries a new way
Three years ago, Amherst Town Justice Mark Farrell tried something new with those accused of crimes linked to gambling.
If the evaluation of a defendant showed a serious gambling problem, the case could be transferred to Amherst's gambling court. There, in the first gambling court in the nation, Farrell used routine plea bargains to attack underlying gambling problems.
"Getting a pathological or compulsive gambler to admit their problem is tougher than getting them to admit they're a heroin addict," he said. "I can't run a blood test or a urine test for it."
Farrell can consider only defendants charged with a misdemeanor in Amherst, so the gambling court's caseload remains small, 12 to 15 cases at a time.
"We've had instances in our courthouse when kids were involved in criminal possession of stolen property, petty larceny, emanating from those safe little Texas Hold 'Em games that the parents sponsored for Saturday nights so they could keep all the young men at home," he said.
After the game, Farrell said, the teens were stealing to pay off their debts.
"I'm not a hypocrite. I'll go up to the casino once or twice a year and have dinner, and maybe go out and try my luck and lose," Farrell said. "Ninety-six or 97 percent of the population can readily handle gaming as a pastime. It's those who can't that are beginning to proliferate, and what are we doing to take care of them?"
Given the casino in Buffalo and other gambling expansions, he said, there's no chance a relatively new gambling court in the region will run out of customers.
Teens playing poker
There are other services to help problem or addicted gamblers.
Jewish Family Services of Buffalo, a gambling addiction treatment provider, accepts patients regardless of religion. And the director of that treatment said the sting of gambling addiction cuts across racial, ethnic and socio-economic divides.
"There's no one you can point at and say, "They won't be a problem gambler,' " said Renee Wert.
There is no typical bankrupt gambler either, Freedman said.
It may be a 75-year-old grandmother or a 20-year-old college student. Gambling addiction engenders secrecy, and when other family members discover the truth, it can have a devastating impact, he said.
Yet the state's entire anti-gambling budget is about $3 million, used for prevention programs and treatment.
In Ontario, a $30 million annual budget pays for prevention programs, treatment for gambling addicts, and more. Jewish Family Services has seen a growing number of first-time cases since gambling options expanded in Western New York. Wert remains wary of what the future will bring.
"We don't know what's going to happen, especially if a casino is built in Buffalo," she said.
Meanwhile, Tony and others who have seen the down side of gambling worry.
Now Tony works on getting his satisfaction from working hard and doing right by his son and wife.
"I messed up pretty big, and she's still there behind me supporting me 100 percent," he said. "Makes me realize every day how lucky I am to have her and my son."
He has heard the casino is coming to Buffalo. He knows already that he will feel its pull.
"I work in downtown Buffalo," he said. "I'm going to have to see it every day."
e-mail: agalarneau@buffnews.com
One of the pictures from the article on how to get help
I had so much fun playing in the snow on Friday as Youngstown does not have any yet. I was skipping through the snow on Elmwood, ridiculous but I didn't care. I had brought my camera with me, but didn't take any pictures. Anyway, the snowflake picture is pretty :)
That snow is for real allright. For me it is hard to get a good picture of it. Or maybe realistic is the word I'm looking for. It was kinda dark out and the flash reflects off the snow so it shines and kinda shuts out the background. It looked a lot crazzier in person.
Oh my gosh! Is that snow for real?