No surprises in report

Friday, June 18, 1999 | 11:29 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The National Gambling Impact Study Commission today released its report on a difficult two-year examination of one of the fastest growing industries in America.

The report, the first on gambling since 1976, recognizes the economic benefits gaming brings to a community, but encourages the industry to spend more money and resources fighting its downside, problem and pathological gambling.

Among its 76 recommendations, the report calls for a ban on Internet gambling and tougher federal regulations over Indian gaming, and it seeks to persuade states to act more responsibly when running lotteries. All three recommendations were backed by the casino industry.

But the report also makes suggestions the industry opposes, such as a sports betting ban on college athletics, tight restrictions on casino industry campaign contributions and a pause in the expansion of gambling.

"I don't think this is the end," said Kay Cole James, chairwoman of the nine-member federal panel that was given $5 million by Congress to look at the social and economic impact of gambling across the United States. "I think this is the beginning of the dialogue, of the discussion."

James, who for the first time confirmed speculation that she holds an anti-gaming view, unveiled the report with eight of her fellow commissioners at a packed news conference at the National Press Club.

In a four-page prepared statement, James said she believed the panel's most important recommendation was the call for communities to consider a pause in future gambling.

"This was not a call for prohibition, nor was it a blessing for unfettered expansion," James said. "With the rapid expansion that has occurred in the past 20 years and the new information that is available to us about problem and pathological gambling, it seems only prudent that those entrusted with protecting the public would take a moment and examine their policies and practices related to gambling activities."

The most critical assessment of gambling came from Commissioner James Dobson, president of the conservative Focus on the Family.

"After two years of service," Dobson told reporters, "I am even more convinced now that gambling is a destroyer."

Dobson said the nation needs to come to grips with the personal devastation caused by the nation's estimated 15.4 million problem and pathological gamblers.

"I hope the American people will take another look at what this activity is doing to our culture," he said.

Dobson, a leader in the religious right, also said Congress and legislatures across the country need to look at the stepped-up political role of the gambling industry. He referred to recent fund-raising trips to Las Vegas by President Clinton, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., and others as a sign of gaming's new clout in Washington. He also mentioned a recent Sun story in which Democratic National Committee Chairman Joe Andrew said he wanted Democrats to be the party of the gambling industry.

Commissioner Terry Lanni, chairman of MGM Grand Inc., said he found it significant that this panel came to the same conclusion as the 1976 commission -- that the regulation of gambling should be left to the states, not the federal government.

Since that time, Lanni said commercial casinos have spread to 10 states and lotteries to 37 states plus the District of Columbia.

"Today the vast majority of Americans either gamble recreationally and experience no measurable side effects related to their gambling, or they choose not to gamble at all," the report said. "Regrettably, some of them gamble in ways that harm themselves, their families and their communities."

Commissioner Richard Leone, a former New Jersey treasurer, told reporters that Americans need to refocus the debate on gambling from its benefits to its costs.

His words were backed up in the report.

"It is clear that the American people want legalized gambling, and it has already sunk deep economic and other roots in many communities," the report said. "The balance between its benefits and costs, however, is not fixed. To a welcome extent, that appears to lie within our power to determine."

For the first time ever, the report gave the casino industry and Las Vegas a clean bill of health over its historical ties to organized crime.

"All of the evidence presented to the commission indicates that effective state regulation, coupled with the takeover of much of the industry by public corporations, has eliminated organized crime from the direct ownership and operation of casinos, the report said.

Other recommendations contained in the report include: restricting all legal gambling across the country to those above 21, putting warnings in casinos about the risks of gambling, banning ATMs from casinos and halting the spread of convenience gambling in neighborhoods.

The report also recommends that each state or Indian tribe impose a gambling privilege tax on gaming operators to help fund gambling addiction treatment.

One of the industry's biggest critics in Washington, Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., proposed this week a 1 percent national gaming tax to fund such treatment.

But several commissioners today said they opposed Wolf's proposal.