Site Presented By
Sunday, Jul 5, 2009
Determined to defeat lawsuits over addiction, the casino industry is funding research at a Harvard-affiliated lab.
By Eliza Strickland
Read more: Politics, Science, Addiction, News, Gambling, Neurology, Environment & Science
June 16, 2008 | Jean Brochu was a respectable attorney in Quebec with a wife and two kids. That was before he first punched the button on a video slot machine in 2000. Within 15 months, Brochu says he was losing $500 a day to the machines. He plunged headlong into debt, and lost his car and his house. He stole $50,000 from his union, and was consequently disbarred for three months. He claims that in several dark moments he contemplated suicide. He also says it was all the fault of those slot machines.
Now Brochu is the lead plaintiff in a massive class action lawsuit against Loto-Quebec, the government agency that runs all forms of gambling in the province. Brochu's lawyer, Roger Garneau, says he filed the suit on behalf of the estimated 119,000 gambling addicts in Quebec province. Garneau says the slot machines dragged these citizens into addiction. "They have been conceived and constructed for trapping the mind," he says. The suit asks for almost $700 million in damages.
For Garneau to win at trial this year, he'll have to prove not only that Brochu and his fellow plaintiffs are gambling addicts suffering from a diagnosable mental illness, but also that their illness is a direct result of playing the 15,000 video slot machines scattered in bars and restaurants throughout the province.
The plaintiffs' lawyers will argue that these nefarious machines lured in unsuspecting citizens, dazzled their eyes with flashing lights, and drowned out the murmurs of guilt and responsibility in the back of their heads with the sound of cascading coins. They'll try to show that the casinos and video slot machines turned Brochu and the others into junkies, unable to think of anything expect their next chance to score big. With their lawsuit, the plaintiffs will be taking aim at one of the gaming industry's most cherished talking points, which sounds a bit silly when you strip it down to basics: Gambling doesn't cause gambling addiction.
On the other side, lawyers for Loto-Quebec will base their argument on what also might seem a far-fetched notion: Casinos and slot machines aren't the culprits -- genetics and brain chemistry are. In essence, they'll argue that the fault, dear gambler, lies not in our Stardust casinos, but in ourselves. In doing so, the industry will set up a rock-solid defense against troubling lawsuits and arm pro-casino legislators with scientific data.
With the ugly specter of gambling addiction, of ruined lives and families, hanging over their heads, gaming advocates will bolster their cases with research from the National Center for Responsible Gaming (NCRG), a nonprofit group, associated with Harvard University, that funds most of the scientific research on gambling addiction. The research will show that only a few unfortunate souls -- those predisposed to addiction -- will get into trouble, while everyone else can gamble for entertainment with no ill effects. The center's studies were exhibited last fall in Boston, where lawmakers wrestled over bringing three casinos to Massachusetts. They will also be on display in the coming year, as lawmakers across the country consider legalized gambling and new casinos, with literally billions of dollars hanging in the balance.
But there's a serious kink in the studies: The NCRG is a wing of the casinos' main trade group, the American Gaming Association, which has committed a total of $22 million to the center. To ethicists and casino critics, that relationship is a cautionary tale of science getting too close to industry. While NCRG leaders say they fund independent science, it's not a coincidence that the science aligns so well with the interests of the casinos. It's not that gambling executives are tampering with research findings, or scientists are skewing results. Rather, gaming executives are drawing extravagant conclusions from the studies. By trumpeting these conclusions, the gaming industry is helping casinos gain a legal foothold across the country -- and covering up the ways casinos profit from gambling addiction.
