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JONI B. HANNIGAN
Managing Editor
JACKSONVILLE (FBW)-"Play Responsibly"-like "Safe Sex," Drink Responsibly," and Surgeon General warnings-may salve the conscience of those involved in promoting social ills, but the slogan barely touches the gambling industry's imprint in Florida.
Despite rejecting casino gambling three times since 1978, Florida is home to a vigorous gambling industry made up of 31 racetracks, dog tracks and jai alai frontons; about 26 gambling boats called "cruises to nowhere;" a state sanctioned lottery, and at least six casino operations located on Native American reservations throughout the state.
In addition, there are more than 50 additional pleasure cruise ships involved in interstate or foreign commerce that take on passengers in Florida, but operate in international waters. These ships, operated by Carnival Cruise Lines, Norwegian Cruise Lines, Royal Caribbean International and others, mostly depart from ports up and down the east and west coasts of Florida to destinations overseas.
The Sunshine State's "cruises to nowhere," join Indian casino operations to make up what is considered one of the nations largest un-regulated gambling industries. These boats offer craps, blackjack and slot machine play in international waters at least three miles off shore, but return to home ports in Florida - without travel to another destination.
As long ago as 1998, Bill Thompson, a professor of gambling at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a nationally recognized expert on the industry, said the lack of regulation should concern Florida authorities. While other casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, N.J. answer to a gambling board, a 1998 Knight-Ridder story says regulators have discovered there are few requirements, if any, in Florida.
Florida's floating casinos, because they operate in international waters, pass muster with clearance from the Coast Guard for seaworthiness and from state authorities when they apply for an Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco license, according to the Knight-Ridder news story.
Current legislation
Although voters fought ballot initiatives in 1978, 1986 and 1994 designed to legalize casino gambling, there have been repeated attempts to expand gambling.
In 2002, an attempt to allow slot machines at Florida horse and dog tracks was narrowly rejected by the Florida Supreme Court, according to a St. Petersburg Times news story.
An additional effort to get the 2002 Legislature to approve video lottery terminals (VLTs) at the state's 31 licensed racetrack and jai alai fronts also was defeated.
A few weeks before this year's state legislative session began, Rep. Dennis Baxley (R-Ocala) chairman of the House Subcommittee on Gaming and Pari-Mutuels-and a member of First Baptist Church Bellview, told Florida Baptist Witness he wants to make sure his fellow members carefully consider the long-range social and economic costs that gambling expansion is sure to bring. (For a profile on Baxley, see "Rep. Dennis Baxley: Man on a mission" from the May 10, 2001, issue of Florida Baptist Witness and the Feb. 27, 2003 article, "Legislator urges prayer, action from fellow Baptists").
Baxley said there is "tremendous pressure" in the Legislature favoring the video lottery terminals bill because of concerns about balancing the state's $54 billion annual budget and because of projections that VLTs could raise as much as $1 billion in annual revenues. Republicans, led by Senate President Jim King of Jacksonville, are considering legalizing certain types of gambling.
Governor Jeb Bush, in his State of the State address before the Legislature March 4, did not propose an expansion of gambling in order to address budget woes. After a Feb. 18 House hearing (see "Panel hears testimony on video lotteries") and a March 6 Senate hearing on VLTs, Tom Slade, former state Republican chairman and now a lobbyist told the Palm Beach Post he believes Gov. Bush is not as emphatic as he has been in the past about opposing gambling expansion.
"Apparently, there's some flexibility there," Slade told the Post in describing statements from Bush and House Speaker Johnnie Byrd, R-Plant City.
As rhetoric heats up and the Legislature looks for more money, a column by Ron Littlepage in Jacksonville's Times-Union (Feb. 25, 2003) echoes voices throughout the state who maintain "Florida already allows gambling." The column repeats an oft-stated mantra that says the lottery is "a tax on the dumb."
Floridians, according to Littlepage, should accept VLTs and the tax revenues generated, "with a big smile and a thank you."
Littlepage ignores what gambling opponents say is a fact: "Gambling costs far more than it benefits."
The cost of gambling
A 1999 report issued by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission (NGISC), described in a Focus on the Family CitizenLink newsletter, calls gambling a highly addictive activity that can devastate various ethnic groups, the poor and youth-and can impact society through suicide, divorce, abuse and neglect.
Current estimates are that approximately 2.5 million people are pathological gamblers and another 3 million are problem gamblers in America. Nearly 15 million are considered "at risk" of becoming a "problem gambler."
"The Commission's final report," reads the article by Ronald A. Reno, "paints a dark and often devastating portrait of the effects of widespread legalized gambling on America's families and communities."
In a 2003 report issued by the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling (NCALG), gambling is described as an activity that reaches out to all taxpayers, whether they gamble or not.
"Gambling cannibalizes local businesses," says the report. "A hundred dollars spent in a slot machine is a hundred dollars that is not spent in a local restaurant, theater or retail store."
The NCALG report cities a Florida Office of Planning and Budgeting study which concluded the costs of paying for problems related to gambling addiction "far outweighed all revenues that might be generated by casino gambling."
Other concerns documented in the report are that gambling attracts crime, it victimizes the poor, it presents a bad example to children and it can corrupt government. "Wherever gambling has gone, bribery, extortion and payoffs have followed."
The NCALG also points to another startling statistic.
"Gambling addiction has become an epidemic among youth," the report states. Calling gambling the "fastest-growing teenage addiction," researchers say the rate of pathological gambling among high school and college-age youth is about twice that of adults.
In the report, Howard Shaffer, director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Addiction Studies, is quoted as saying: "Today, there are more children experiencing adverse symptoms from gambling than from drugs ... and the problem is growing."
Family Research Council's Timothy A. Kelly, also reported in his book Gambling Backlash: Time for a Moratorium on Casino and Lottery Expansion, that lotteries adversely affect minors.
Citing the "ease in which minors can participate in lottery gambling, despite legal restrictions," Kelly said, "such experiences can function as a gateway to more intensive gambling and to pathological gambling."
Kelly also comments on the widespread influence of Internet gambling and says it is comparable to Internet pornography.
"[It] has been perceived as a threat to children and adolescents precisely because it is so easily available in the home and in college dorms," said Kelly. "No one uses the Internet more than America's youth, and no one is more vulnerable to its temptations.
"Now every parent has to reckon with the fact that commercial gambling is available in the dens and bedrooms of their homes via the Internet."
Warning that Internet gambling is "especially destructive" for those vulnerable to addictions, Kelly said it "provides high-speed instant gratification together with the anonymity of the home setting."
In his book, Kelly supports the prohibition by the federal government of Internet gambling and urges lawmakers to support enforcement strategies. He also calls for help from foreign government to prohibit Internet gambling that preys on U.S. citizens-especially America's children and adolescents who are put at risk.
Florida's attorney general, Charlie Crist, who took office in
January, has not yet offered an opinion on whether the state
government should be involved in prosecuting Internet gambling.
In 1995, Former Florida Attorney General Robert A. Butterworth,
in a memo to state senator Steven A. Geller, D-Broward, said
Florida law does prohibit an individual within the sate from
placing a bet or wager.
Butterworth declined to prosecute Internet gambling, however, after concluding "evolving technology appears to be far outstripping the ability of government to regulate gambling activities on Internet and of law enforcement to enforce such regulations.
"Thus, resolution of these matters must be addressed at the national, if not international level," Butterworth wrote.