Gambling foes rip industry research alliances

WASHINGTON -- Acknowledging the dangers of addiction, the casino industry has entered into an alliance with therapists and researchers to fight compulsive gambling even as it defends legalized gambling.

Gambling opponents say the alliance undermines rather than promotes impartial study.

About 150 experts gathered Friday at a conference focusing on biological causes and possible treatments for compulsive gambling. Few seemed bothered that the event sponsor, the National Center for Responsible Gaming, is a creation of the casino industry.

"We're were not going to make the mistake the tobacco industry made in denying" the problem of addiction, said Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., president of the American Gaming Association, which lobbies on behalf of casinos and formed the center in 1996.

Organizers said the conference focused a new and welcome degree of medical attention on gambling addiction, long considered a stepchild of more commonly discussed disorders such as drug and alcohol dependency. Estimates vary widely, but a 1997 study concluded that more than 2 million adults and 4 million youths suffer from problem gambling each year.

On another level, the conference showed how the gambling industry has turned problem gambling from a political liability into a pet cause. That could pay off beginning next week, when a federally appointed gambling panel begins work on a report due in June.

Critics aren't impressed.

Bernie Horn, spokesman for the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, said the industry and the center are steering research toward genetic causes and biological mechanics of addiction.

"That's lovely," he said. "The problem is that the gambling industry will not research the prevalence of gambling addiction, the cost of gambling addiction and the percentage that gambling addicts contribute to the revenues of gambling establishments. These are the questions that policy-makers need to know."

Based in Kansas City, where it is affiliated with the University of Missouri, the National Center for Responsible Gaming has distributed $1.5 million in grants since 1997 for research into compulsive gambling. Executive director Christine Reilly said the center's governing board will soon award a new round of grants totaling $1.1 million.

"We're really creating this field," Reilly said. "There hasn't been a field."

Luncheon speaker Howard Shaffer, director of the Division on Addictions at Harvard Medical School, said the conference "represents a turning point" for a field of study that until now has gotten minimal attention.

He acknowledged it was unusual to be at a compulsive gambling conference sponsored by the gambling industry. But he said the industry has exerted no undue influence on the research its center is funding.

"If there were questions, I'd walk away," Shaffer said.

Compulsive gambling is one of the major issues under consideration by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, which is meeting in Virginia Beach, Va., next week to begin putting together its much-anticipated report.

Fahrenkopf, who will address the commission today on behalf of casinos, said he will highlight the work of the National Center for Responsible Gaming and ask that Indian casinos, state lotteries and the pari-mutuel horse-racing industry contribute money for further research into compulsive gambling.

Horn, who will represent the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, said he will ask the commission to recommend that governments fund the research to make sure the studies are not biased.

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