Casinos decry survey by opponents

The opponents held a news conference Monday to release a survey that casino spokespersons attacked as flawed.

"It's a classic example of the adage, 'Figures lie and liars figure,"' Phil Linsalata of the Greektown-Chippewa Indian Casino, who attended the news conference, told the Detroit Free Press in a report Tuesday.

Leaders of the Coalition to Repeal Proposal E commissioned the telephone poll of 700 Detroit adults by the Flint-based Social Systems Research Institute. The coalition hopes to put the repeal issue before Michigan voters in November.

The poll found that 6 percent of Detroit residents are compulsive gamblers, survey director Robin Widgery said. A 1997 survey by Western Michigan University found that 3 percent of Michigan adults were compulsive gamblers, she said.

The new survey also found poor and elderly Detroiters are nearly twice as likely as others to have a compulsive gambler in their household, the institute said.

The Free Press report did not indicate when the survey was taken or its margin of error. The newspaper said the poll did not specify whether those people identified as compulsive gamblers had problems with casinos, horse racing, the state lottery or other forms of gambling.

A 1997 Harvard Medical School survey, funded by the gambling industry, found that fewer than 2 percent of adults in the United States and Canada are compulsive gamblers.

The three Detroit casino developers have pledged $2 million to fight gambling addiction in the city, spokespersons said.

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