The reality, and social cost, of casinos

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Sobering column from Froma Harrop in the Dispatch.  It sums up my problems with Issue 3 very well: unlikely to lead to economic development and yet has huge social cost. Voters in Cleveland and Cincinnati where swayed by the promise of jobs in a bad economy and overlooked the long term implications.

Here is the killer paragraph:

What’s going to happen, Thompson [a professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and an expert on the casino business] predicts, is that about 10 percent of Ohio’s casino revenues will reflect gamblers returning home from the surrounding states. But the presence of casinos near population centers will simply mint new gamblers, and that will be a drain on the economy.

Compulsive gamblers steal, lose jobs, have debts and go on welfare. The economic rule of thumb on problem gamblers is as follows: A casino within 50 miles of a community doubles the rate of compulsive gambling, and these troubled individuals exact a social cost of about $10,000 each.

About 90 percent of Ohio’s population will soon be within 50 miles of a casino. If Ohio follows the expected pattern, the four gaming halls will create 80,000 more compulsive gamblers, siphoning about $800 million a year from the economy.

And here is the tragic bottom line:

The desperation in recession-racked regions is understandable, but the reality is this: If large numbers of high rollers aren’t jetting in, casinos tend to take more from local economies than they give.