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Seniors in Casino Land
Seventy-five percent of older Americans favor the slot machine over other forms of gambling. Far different from the old fashioned, "one-armed-bandits" with spinning reels and coins pouring forth, modern slots and similar electronic gambling devices are computerized machines that use light, sound, an...
Seniors addicted to the slots
Seniors in Casino Land: Tough Luck for Older Americans
Two years ago I began researching casinos and older Americans as a potential public health issue. I visited casinos midweek, midday when researchers like Omar Moufakkir have charted seniors prefer to visit. I then put those ethnographic observations into conversation with academic research on senior...
Are Too Many Seniors Gambling Their Lives Away?
The dangerous allure of one-armed bandits
Florida will lose with gambling
After all, studies show that where casinos locate there is an increase in crime, bankruptcy, suicide and divorce. One study by economist Earl Grinols found that every $1 a casino brings in creates $3 in social and economic costs. Casinos do not generate much new spending but instead divert it from e...
Money, influence still pushing casinos for Florida
In fact, the slots are so lucrative casinos often agree to pay a tax as high as 50 percent or more on gambling revenues, provided they are guaranteed a monopoly in a market. Lawmakers often go along with the gambling plans – despite the well-documented social and economic costs – bec...
The harmful -- even deadly -- effects of casino gambling
Casino gambling is not new, but two features are. One is the growth of gambling participation among older adults. In the 23 states with commercial casinos, roughly half of the patrons are age 50 and over. In Florida, with nearly 37 percent of the population 50 and over, gambling represents a huge po...
Casinos' economic harms trump gains
The gambling industry likes to brag that new casinos will provide jobs for the construction workers who build them and the people who work in them. That's true. But what they never tell you, and what study after study shows, is that those economic gains are typically outweighed by the larger economi...
History tells us the slot machine is a loser
Does this sound like ancient history? Think again. The heart and soul of casino gambling today is the slot machine. Once derided by the mobsters who invented the American casino as "babe sitters" – something for wives and girlfriends to do while the men played at the tables – slo...
An anti-gambling warrior digs in against NY casino expansion
One of Blankenhorn's core arguments is that casinos draw most of their income from problem gamblers, resulting in a regressive tax that falls heavily on lower-class and elderly patrons... Blankenhorn knows he will likely lose this fight in his own backyard, but he has his eye on the bigger picture. ...
Have Some Fun, Smash a Slot Machine
La Guardia did not believe slot machines are wrong because they're illegal as much as he believed that they're illegal because they're wrong. Slot machines cheat ordinary New Yorkers, especially those lower-income New Yorkers who can least afford it, and that was pretty much all La Guardia needed to...
Casino opponents smash slot machine to protest potential gambling expansion
The stunt was inspired by former New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's efforts against slot machines more than 70 years ago. The late mayor was famous for smashing slot machines in protest of gambling in New York. "Overwhelmingly what people do at casinos is put their money in slot machines and t...
Casino supporters fail to sway a skeptical audience
Gambling supporters, engaging in a vigorous Oxford-style debate against opponents inside Syracuse University's Maxwell Auditorium, failed to convince the crowd that New York would benefit by expanding games of chance statewide... "Problem gambling is an epidemic in America," said Shafer, chairperson...
Slot bash opposes casino vote
The Tuesday press event in West Capitol Park was organized by the Institute for American Values, a Manhattan think-tank that has recently issued reports warning of the potential social costs from increased gambling addiction. "It felt great," said David Blankenhorn, the institute's president, who to...
NY casino foes smash slot machine in protest
Members of the nonprofit think tank Institute for American Values, the Coalition Against Gambling in New York and other anti-gambling activists took turns with a sledgehammer whacking a slot machine in front of the state Capitol. They oppose a Nov. 5 voter referendum that would authorize Democratic ...
Anti-gambling activists smash slot machine at state capitol
Blankenhorn says he's reviving a decades old tradition of politicians smashing slot machines. He stood beside a photo of New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia smashing a slot machine in the 1930's. LaGuardia warned New Yorkers that the slots preyed on them and took their money. Today, New York's to...
NY casino foes smash slot machine outside Capitol
Slot machine smashing
Just like that, David Blankenhorn re-enacted a historic moment. The scene was a little different 70 years ago when former NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia smashed 50 slot machines, but the message, Blankenhorn insists, is still the same."We have no business cheating people to raise money for the state a...
Slot machine smashing
Just like that, David Blankenhorn re-enacted a historic moment. The scene was a little different 70 years ago when former NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia smashed 50 slot machines, but the message, Blankenhorn insists, is still the same."We have no business cheating people to raise money for the state a...