[Bubba]

Originally Posted by Mike B.

Gambling: What the experts are saying!

In 2006, Frank Fahrenkopf was President and CEO for the American Gaming Association, and thus stood as the leading national spokesman for commercial casinos.
But would Fahrenkopf want one of his products in his own home town? Here’s his comment:
"People have the right to go to the ballot box and determine what they want the quality of life to be in their own area. Now if someone were to come along and tell me that they were going to put a casino in McLean, Virginia, where I live, I would probably work very, very hard against it. I just don’t -- what’s the old saying, ‘NIMBY, not in my back yard?’ Now I may be in favor of gaming, but I just don’t want it located in a particular area." AGA CEO Frank Fahrenkopf in Cleveland, Ohio, Oct. 24, 2006

Mr. Fahrenkopf knows that gambling…

Lowers quality of life, Causes addiction,
Contributes to divorce, Increases crime,
Cannibalizes jobs, Increases bankruptcy,
Corrupts politics, Damages the economy,
Increases suicides.

If Frank would not want these in his home town, why
would we?

Funny how you attribute these things that Mr. Fahrenkopf "knows," since I found these questions and replies in an PBS interview.

Q: What is the most misunderstood thing about this industry, do you think?

Fahrenkopf: I think there are...stereotypes that are out there that look back 30, 40 years ago, which are perpetuated by some movies, that come out of Hollywood, you know? "Casino." And you go back to the "Godfather" movies. I mean, for years, the FBI and major law enforcement have said there is not, today, in -- what we call the entertainment, casino/entertainment business -- an organized crime penetration. It's not there.

A lot of the opponents love to drag up the old stereotype and throw it out. So, that's number one. Secondly is the question whether or not having a casino or gambling in a particular community attracts what we call street crime. That there's something inherent, something endemic about gambling that creates street crime -- people are going to get mugged. There's going to be larceny and so forth. And I think that's been proven over the years, by law enforcement, to be not true.

It's nothing inherent in gaming. Any endeavor, any enterprise that attracts large numbers of people... the crime rate at Orlando went up. It wasn't anything that Mickey and Minnie were doing that caused it, it was just that it was a draw of people to a community. Branson, Missouri is one that I use quite often. A wonderful, wonderful town in the Ozarks with country music. They pride themselves as being the buckle of the bible belt. And very limited alcohol, certainly not in any of the theaters that are there. It's now a country-western Mecca. And their crime rate went up.

It wasn't because of anything that's happening there. It's a very safe place. But, what you do is when you draw large numbers of people to a community, you are going to have street crimes. It's not -- doesn't have anything to do with gambling, inherently.

I think the one that I worked the hardest on, however, has to do with the so-called problem of the compulsive or problem gamblers. The experts tell us -- the counseling groups and physicians who spend time on it -- that it's somewhere between 1 - 5% of the population. People who can't help themselves and will go in and gamble away their money.

The opponents of gaming say, "Well, these people then, they go out and they commit crimes and they go on welfare and therefore they are a drain on society. And therefore we shouldn't allow this to go on. And that's the reason to stop gambling.

Well, forgetting for a moment whether the fact that 95% or more, of the American public doesn't have a problem. Our approach to this was we should take this on head on. And the industry has. When we started the American Gaming Association, one of the first things our board did is said, "Look, if there's a problem out there -- regardless of how small it is -- we have an obligation as corporate citizens to do something about it." And they are doing something about it. They're putting a million dollars a year into what we call the Center for Responsible Gaming, which is located on the campus of the University of Missouri in Kansas City.

The Board of Directors in the center is half industry and half -- the leading people, today, in this country, dealing with problem or compulsive gaming -- physicians, doctors -- former secretary of HSS. The people who really work with this.

Now, we don't do research ourselves, because we know, any study that we do that says American Gaming Association on it, people are going to throw it up on the shelf. What we do is we take that money and we make grants to institutions, that are, hopefully, beyond approach in anyone's mind, to do work and study.

The first grant was just recently given to Harvard University's Medical School Addiction Center to look at all the evidence that's out there to try to find solutions to this problem. This is different. There is no analogies that can be made with tobacco or alcohol or drugs.

In those addictions, people are ingesting a foreign substance into their body. With problem or compulsive gaming, it's more akin to the problems -- I read more and more about and see on television more -- of people who have those little plastic cards, called credit cards and can't control their spending. It's compulsive behavior. And not enough study has been done of that.

We, as an industry, are stepping up to the plate. We're putting our money where our mouth is, and, hopefully -- and that's why I'm so supportive of the federal commission when it gets up and operating because the National Academy of Science is charged to do that research and come up with some solutions and answers.

Q: Tell me about the Arthur Andersen Job Study. Can you boil it down to a simple statement, or two, about what it came to tell you?

Fahrenkopf: Well, one of the arguments that anti-gaming activists have made for years, is that gambling tends to be -- they use the word, cannibalistic -- that... when it comes into a community, what it does is it doesn't create any new wealth or doesn't bring any new money, it just takes money away from other business. That argument has been out there for a long time and kept being pushed by anti-gaming opponents.

We wanted to take a hard look at that because we didn't believe it was true. Arthur Andersen did a macroeconomic study of the United States, going into those new jurisdictions and found that that is not the case. That overwhelmingly what's happened, is the disposable of the income of the American people has gone up dramatically, and gaming is only taking a very, very small part of that. And so it is not driving. It is not cannibalistic.

And, in fact, what it has done -- in most of the markets where it's been looked at--it's actually helped other businesses. Now, that's not to say, that if a casino comes into a community and opens up and it has wonderful restaurants that, you know, some guy whose had a family restaurant down the road for a hundred years, hasn't been able to compete.

But that's no different than if a new mall comes into a community. And in that new mall there's modern motion picture center where there's six or seven screen. There's a new shoe store. There's a new restaurant. When that new mall comes into a community, that old theater that was once there; the old shoe store; the old restaurant are likewise going to suffer. I mean, it happens to be a free market, capitalist system.

And so why the Arthur Andersen study was important -- not only was to show that there's a tremendous, positive financial impact to businesses and to the state and local jurisdictions by way of taxation -- but that it is not cannibalizing other businesses as the opponents have said for so many years.

It appears that your research on the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling website didn't paint the whole picture about how he "feels" or what he "knows."