Commentary—

Casinos, Like Corporations, Need To Be Controlled

By William A. Collins

Love to gamble,

’Till I drop:

Sometimes don’t know,

How to stop.

For an awful lot of citizens, gambling, like a credit card, is “fun.” Witness the steady stream of buses plying the highways to Foxwoods and Mohegan, and the flocks of planes winging off to Las Vegas. From New York City, there even remains a daily surge of coaches to Atlantic City. And locally there’s the lottery.

Soon there will be more. Foxwoods is building yet another huge addition a la Vegas, in conjunction, it hopes, with MGM Mirage. Before long, the gambling flights will be coming into Bradley, not going out.

But this proposed partnership presents a dilemma for state policymakers. The bigger and glitzier the complex, the more profit for the state. That’s pretty tempting. On the other hand, Connecticut’s gambling genius up to now has been the relatively low-key atmosphere of its facilities. The two tribes are surely making a killing, and just as surely are not hiding their light under a bushel — but to their credit, they are discreet.

That would likely change with MGM’s people. They are not exactly a discreet bunch, and probably would not even come here if discretion were required. What a pity if they stayed away. The General Assembly should make it plain to MGM moguls that they are not welcome and should peddle their glitz elsewhere. Lawmakers should also counsel the Pequots that they are off base with this new image making, and had better straight away return to their original soft-sell game plan.

Surely, neither casino has anything to grouse about. They’re the two largest in the world, play host to huge entertainment performances, and even harbor a top basketball team. How much more do they want? There are only a few hundred remaining Indians to share the profits, including all those long lost great-great-grandnephews who have materialized in recent years. It would be unbecoming to let unvarnished greed replace their heretofore measured response to unmeasured wealth.

A more appropriate focus just now would be a deeper study of gambling addiction. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is plenty of it around, but the governor and lawmakers don’t want to hear about it. They just want their money. They’ve even postponed research called for in the original casino legislation.

And as much as the casinos ignore customers sickened by their business, the state itself is even more perverse. Its lottery specifically targets low-income gamblers and offers shameless emotional appeals right at their corner store. No long bus ride needed. Who cares about a little addiction?

Plus now the casinos report that a third of their customers are Asian, heavily drawn from Boston and New York. Asian gambling addiction is nearly as legendary as Native American alcohol addiction. So do the casinos send counselors to help? No way. They just send buses.

It is time at last for state government to assert its proper regulatory role. The tribes have plenty of cash to conduct studies and to track down and treat addicts. They even could be required to study addiction to the state’s shameful lottery scam.

Yes, people will always gamble, but at least now they no longer need to do it through the mob. That’s good. The state though, can’t escape its moral responsibility of finding and treating its own addicts.

Then the General Assembly could get around to forcing the banks to find and treat their credit card addicts.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)