Gambling Prevention 101

Saturday, Feb. 17, 2001 | 11:40 a.m.

Middle school students in Minnesota are taught that they are eight times more likely to be killed on a family vacation by a terrorist than of winning the state lottery.

Louisiana fifth through eighth graders are learning in math about gambling's long odds. New Jersey and Connecticut legislators are debating bills to require their schools to teach the risks of placing a wager.

While these states are considering or taking action to instruct kids on the perils of underage gambling, the issue is barely on Nevada's radar screen.

"We really don't have anything specific for gambling in the curriculum," said Gene Butler, acting director for secondary curriculum in the Clark County School District. "We teach refusal skills, such as how to say 'no' and how to resist peer pressure, but something related to gambling hasn't been considered."

That may change. Later this spring the state's Education Department for the first time will ask sixth through 12th graders the following question:

"During the past 12 months, how many times have you gambled, such as betting money on cards, games of personal skills or sports teams, buying lottery tickets or gambling in a casino?"

The question will be included in a statewide risk-behavior survey that is given to students every other year.

"The whole purpose of doing the survey is to pinpoint where there are problems," Marianne Carr, a state health education consultant, said. "Where there are problems the goal is to incorporate the information in the survey into the school districts' programs."

But Butler said that while the local district's curriculum continues to be affected by social issues, it would be difficult to add a topic such as compulsive gambling without getting money from the state to train teachers.

"It gets back to how it will fit into the curriculum and how teachers will be trained," he said.

Clark County School Board President Mary Beth Scow said she agreed, adding that there has been no such discussion in her four years on the board.

"We have so many things teachers are already mandated to teach, and it would take money to train teachers," she said. "It would be interesting to assess the need to see if we have problems in our community over compulsive gambling among students. But I can tell you the school district does not have the money for something like this."

Project 21

About the only local program targeting underage gambling is the Project 21 initiative founded by Harrah's hotel-casino and supported by the nonprofit Nevada Council on Problem Gambling. Last year the project awarded $25,000 in college scholarships funded mostly by Southern Nevada casinos to students under 21 who wrote essays or made posters containing warnings about underage gambling.

"I have every confidence that underage gambling is taken seriously in Nevada casinos because it puts their licenses at risk," said Carol O'Hare, council executive director. "We want to work with the school district to find out what is going on with the students. This is not simply about throwing another textbook at them.

"To develop a good curriculum we want to develop knowledge as to what level of underage gambling is out there."

Harvard Medical School's Division on Addictions has predicted that youth gambling will be a bigger societal problem than drug use within the next 10 years. Another study cited by New Jersey lawmakers estimates that 1 million individuals under 21 may have a gambling problem in this country. More than one-third of all high school graduates gambled before age 11, and 70 percent placed wagers before age 15, according to the study.

The issue of underage gambling has helped fuel ongoing efforts in Congress to ban wagering in Nevada on collegiate sports such as football and basketball. Nevada politicians and other gaming advocates have countered that the real problem is with bets placed through illegal bookmaking operations.

Filtering down

But the debate is now filtering down to elementary and secondary schools in the East, where politicians and educators are exploring ways to reach children before they become problem gamblers. Connecticut's assistant majority House leader, Democratic Rep. Andrea Stillman, has co-sponsored a bill that would target students in fifth through eighth grades.

"The sooner you can get preventative information into their brains, the more successful you can be at preventing chronic gambling problems later in life," Stillman said. "We seem to be shifting a lot of social responsibilities to the schools, but that's because the students are not getting that information at home."

Stillman backed that statement by citing a 1996 survey by the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling that found 87 percent of high school students had gambled at some point, with 10 percent at risk of having a pathological wagering problem.

It so happens that Stillman's district includes the Foxwoods Casino, the nation's largest Indian resort. Foxwoods turns away close to 30,000 teens annually.

Stillman said the only resistance she expects for her bill will come from other politicians who do not believe schools are the appropriate place to preach the evils of underage gambling.

"We have a state lottery here, and it contributes a great deal to the addiction," Stillman said. "Under state law, lottery tickets can be given to children as gifts. We'd like to review that language, too."

In New Jersey, home of Atlantic City's casinos, a bipartisan bill that would incorporate warnings about gambling in public school instruction is working its way through the Legislature. The resistance in this case is coming from the New Jersey Education Department.

Spokesman Richard Vespucci said educators oppose the bill because such instruction has already been included in the health curriculum since the 1997-98 school year. Vespucci said they fear the legislation would mandate a separate course of study when one isn't necessary.

"We oppose the bill because we feel that under our academic standards our students are already getting that kind of instruction," Vespucci said. "By the end of fourth grade they have been exposed to some form of instruction on that subject. How much they are taught is up to the school districts, as long as the students get the necessary skills."

Part of curriculum

But New Jersey Sen. Joseph Palaia, the Republican president pro tempore of the Senate and co-sponsor of the bill, said his legislation would mandate that compulsive gambling warnings be incorporated into the health curriculum. There is no state law, he state.

"Let's just say the (New Jersey) Department of Education is in transition," Palaia said. "I really don't believe they are teaching about compulsive gambling. We just want to put teeth into the law to show kids the consequences of gambling."

If his bill becomes law, gambling would join drugs, alcohol, tobacco and anabolic steroids as a required topic of warning to be taught. He also proposed a $200,000 appropriation from the general fund to help school districts implement the program.

A 1999 survey found that 53,400 juveniles were prevented from entering New Jersey casinos that year and 39,461 were escorted from the premises. There were also 270 youngsters taken into custody for gambling and 67 detained for other reasons.

"Those are numbers that boggle your mind as to the number of teenagers on the floor of casinos," Palaia said.

Minnesota middle schools were the first to incorporate lessons about problem gambling, in 1991. Although there is no Minnesota law mandating such instruction, two-thirds of the state's middle schools use a curriculum developed by the nonprofit North American Training Institute of Duluth, Minn.

The institute, which also trains counselors who treat problem gamblers, has included in its curriculum the fact that these events are more likely to happen than the one chance in 12.3 million of winning the state lottery:

* Being killed in a car accident -- one in 5,300.

* Being a drowning victim -- one in 20,000.

* Choking to death -- one in 68,000.

* Being killed in a bicycle accident -- one in 75,000.

* Being killed by a terrorist in a foreign country -- one in 1.6 million.

* Being struck and killed by lightning -- one in 2 million.

* Dying from a bee sting -- one in 6 million.

Elizabeth George, institute chief executive, said the program initially was aimed at high school students. But it discovered that "the horse was already out of the barn," meaning gambling habits had already set in. That is why the decision was made to design the curriculum for younger children who had not yet developed such habits.

Easier to learn

"Preventative messages are easier to learn the younger you get," George said. "To teach kids the realities of gambling, one of the best ways is with mathematical probabilities. We ask kids to list the most likely things to happen to them and the least likely things to happen to them.

"The purpose of this is so kids can understand the realities of gambling. Gambling is adult entertainment. At least they'll understand the ramifications of what they're doing if they do gamble and that it is illegal for them."

If Randy Wiggins had his way, Louisiana would have outlawed gaming altogether. But the former state representative succeeded in getting his state in 1999 to pass his bill incorporating lessons about compulsive gambling in school curriculum.

Wiggins, a Republican, said many at-risk children view gambling as their only way out, especially when they are bombarded by gaming-industry billboards and other promotions that promise automobiles and other spoils for the successful gambler. He said his goal was for children to learn that when it comes to gambling, the numbers are not in their favor.

"If you are under 21, you are three times more likely to establish a pathological gambling problem than if you are over 21," Wiggins said, quoting a state study. "It's hard for even the gaming industry to fight the schools on this because we're just trying to educate the public."

Funded by gaming

Louisiana is spending nearly $71,000 to retool its math curriculum beginning this semester to enforce the new law. But the most innovative aspect is that the curriculum was designed by Harvard's Division on Addictions through research funded largely by the gaming industry. Harvard has even trained a group of Louisiana math experts who, in turn, are instructing teachers statewide in the new curriculum.

In the Harvard curriculum, titled "Facing the Odds: the Mathematics of Gambling," the aim is to present statistics and probabilities in ways that students will find relevant in their private lives. They will be taught to improve their critical-thinking ability, number sense and mathematical knowledge of gambling to develop "rational views about gambling and make their own rational choices," according to a Harvard synopsis.

A benefactor of the Harvard effort is the American Gaming Association, the industry lobby in Washington. Judy Patterson, senior vice president and executive director, said the industry has already spent $3.2 million to support research into compulsive gambling and has committed an additional $3.8 million for education, much of which will target children. Major resorts have been asked to donate $100,000 annually.

"Anything that gets out the message that you have to be a certain age to gamble is of interest to the industry," Patterson said. "We are working to find ways to distribute this curriculum to anyone who is interested."

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