Going for Broke
As legalized gambling spreads, concerns are rising over the mounting costs on society. Every day, million of people are wagering with their lives. For them, betting is no longer an avocation but an addiction as broadly destructive as any.
By MATEA GOLD and DAVID FERRELL, Times Staff Writers

Rex Coile's life is a narrow box, so dark and confining he wonders how he got trapped inside, whether he'll ever get out.
     He never goes to the movies, never sees concerts, never lies on a sunny beach, never travels on vacation, never spends Christmas with his family.
     Instead, Rex shares floor space in cheap motels with other compulsive gamblers, comforting himself with delusional dreams of jackpots that will magically wipe away three decades of wreckage.
     He has lost his marriage, his home, his Cadillac, his clothes, his diamond ring. Not least of all, in the card clubs of Southern California, he has lost his pride.
     Rex no longer feels sorry for himself, not after a 29-year losing streak that has left him scrounging for table scraps to feed his habit. Still, he agonizes over what he has become at 54 and what he might have been.
     Articulate, intellectual, he talks about existential philosophy, the writings of Camus and Sartre. He was once an editor at Random House. His mind is so jampacked with tidbits about movies, television, baseball and history that card room regulars call him "Rex Trivia," a name he cherishes for the remnant of self-respect it gives him.

Gambling by the Numbers Amount the public lost wagering in 1997: $50.9 billion Estimated numbers of compulsive gamblers: 4.4 million Federal funds committed to treat problem gamblers: None

     "There's a lot of Rexes around these card rooms," he says in a whisper of resignation and sadness.
     And their numbers are soaring as gambling explodes across America, from the mega-resorts of Las Vegas to the gaming parlors of Indian reservations, from the riverboats along the Mississippi to the corner mini-marts selling lottery tickets.
     With nearly every state in the union now sanctioning some form of legalized gambling to raise revenues, evidence is mounting that society is paying a steep price, one that some researchers say must be confronted, if not reversed.
     Never before have bettors blown so much money--a whopping $50.9 billion last year--five times the amount lost in 1980. That's more than the public spent on movies, theme parks, recorded music and sporting events combined.
     A substantial share of those gambling losses--an estimated 30% to 40%--pours from the pockets and purses of chronic losers hooked on the adrenaline rush of risking their money, intoxicated by the fast action of gambling's incandescent world.
     Studies place the total number of compulsive gamblers at about 4.4 million, about equal to the nation's ranks of hard-core drug addicts. Another 11 million, known as problem gamblers, teeter on the verge. Since 1990, the number of Gamblers Anonymous groups nationwide has doubled from about 600 to more than 1,200.
     No longer is habitual gambling an affliction suffered almost solely by men. More women, teenagers and the elderly are rolling the dice than ever before. The addiction rate among youth is more than double that of adults.
     Many gambling addicts, no matter what their age or sex, share a common beginning: a thrilling and hefty payday that they spend years trying to recapture, turning their early luck into a curse.
     Although pathological gambling was recognized as an impulse control disorder by the American Psychiatric Assn. in 1980, the problem has been afforded neither the urgency nor the treatment funding of substance abuse, despite its similarly corrosive impact on society.
     Compulsive gambling has been linked to child abuse, domestic violence, embezzlement, bogus insurance claims, bankruptcies, welfare fraud and a host of other social and criminal ills. The advent of Internet gambling could lure new legions into wagering beyond their means.
     "It's the hidden disease of the '90s," says Paul Ashe, president of the National Council on Problem Gambling. "You can't see the card tracks on their arms. You can't smell the dice on their breath."
     Clearly, most of the public views gambling as a relatively harmless, if somewhat expensive, recreational activity. The vast majority of people know when to stop, much like someone who can enjoy a single glass of wine over dinner. But even the gambling industry conservatively acknowledges that at least one out every 100 Americans has a serious betting problem--chasing the elusive exhilaration of a big win, rarely retreating from the staggering losses.
     In South Carolina, for example, so many people are spending sleepless nights sinking their savings into the state's 31,000 video poker machines that the governor has dubbed them "the crack cocaine of gambling."
     Every once in a while, a case is so egregious it makes headlines: A 10-day-old baby girl in South Carolina dies after being left for nearly seven hours in a hot car while her mother plays video poker. A suburban Chicago woman is so desperate for a bankroll to gamble that she allegedly suffocates her 7-week-old daughter 11 days after obtaining a $200,000 life-insurance policy on the baby.
     But these tragedies that flash before the public eye are just lightning strokes of a roiling night storm. Far more often, compulsive gambling bends lives more subtly, less sensationally, over the course of years.
     Essential family needs are compromised--food, clothing, simple affection. Faced with mountainous debts, many gamblers lose their homes. Some steal and swindle to stay afloat another day. Too many end their free fall with a bottle of pills or a handgun.
     "If this were a children's toy, it would be pulled off the market immediately," University of Illinois economics professor Earl Grinols says of gambling. "We would not tolerate it."
     Grinols and other gambling critics believe that governments, no matter how strapped for cash, should not be creating victims, granting a stamp of approval to gambling that would never be extended to drugs, alcohol or tobacco. Thirty-seven states now run their own lotteries and spend millions on seductive advertisements.
     "When the cigarette industry did this with Joe Camel, the country was outraged," says Valerie Lorenz, executive director of the Compulsive Gambling Center in Baltimore. "Now our government is doing it."
     Despite the seedlings of a backlash, the reality is that the gambling industry is one of the most powerful forces in American business and politics, stamping out opposition through high-end marketing, sophisticated spin control and enormous campaign contributions.
     In virtually every state where wagering was an issue in the November elections, pro-gambling forces prevailed, even costing two incumbent Southern governors their jobs because they opposed legalized betting.
     With so much at stake, many scholars, addiction specialists and gambling foes of various stripes say it is time to examine the social implications of gambling's expansion, to consider not only the estimated $18 billion generated last year for government but the well-being of those who ante up the money.

[Note: I have omitted the remainder of the article – RD]