From Deseret News archives:
Gambling spurs social, legal woes
Utah could have up to 88,000 'problem' gamers
No formal study has been conducted that enumerates how many problem gamblers live in Utah or counts their social costs. However, extrapolations can be made from studies conducted nationally and in neighboring states; from professionals and groups who help local addicts; and groups that deal with resulting financial and family problems.
The fact that Utah could have problem gamblers despite its gambling ban is not a surprise. A new Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll by Dan Jones & Associates shows that 75 percent of Utahns say they have gambled in their lifetimes; 45 percent of those gamblers have wagered on games within the past year.
Gambling is available at casinos, race tracks and lotteries just over the state boundary; at bingo and poker clubs in Utah, which may or may not be operating legally; and on the Internet.
While other states usually set aside a portion of their gambling earnings to treat problem gamblers, none of that flows back to Utah when its problem gamblers return home or when they gamble illegally.
Gambling 'addicts'
Three key national studies by the National Research Council and the National Opinion Research Center in 1999, both for the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, and by Harvard Medical School in 1997 provide estimates of out-of-control "pathological" gamblers and less-serious "problem" gamblers.
Most gamblers are neither. Pathological gamblers are essentially addicts. Problem gamblers may not be addicts, but they show some or many of the symptoms that pathological gamblers exhibit.
Dr. Michael Kalm, president of the Utah Psychiatric Association, believes that gambling can be as real an addiction as cocaine or alcohol.
The difference, he said, is the mechanism of action, because it doesn't start with ingesting a chemical. In addicts, the pleasure centers of the brain, the dopamine receptors which are "behind virtually all addictions," he says light up. When they are overstimulated, they burn out, requiring more and more to get a similar kind of pleasure. And a problem is born.
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Jackie | Nov. 10, 2007 at 2:00 p.m.
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