Columnist Jeff German: Nevada ignoring gambling addictions

Friday, March 12, 2004 | 5:09 a.m.

Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.

WEEKEND EDITION

March 13 - 14, 2004

For 12 years Christine Drew was a valued employee in the Las Vegas Planning and Development Department.

Having risen to the rank of senior management analyst with an $84,000-a-year salary, the 49-year-old divorcee was intelligent, caring and someone others looked up to in the department. She was a problem solver, always there to ease the woes of her fellow workers.

But Drew had one problem she couldn't solve. She was a pathological gambler who every other week would spend her paycheck playing video poker at supermarkets and neighborhood casinos.

Her world came crashing down last April after a city audit revealed she had embezzled $10,155 from her department's petty cash fund. She admitted to her bosses that she stole the money to fuel her gambling habit.

Drew wrote an emotional three-page letter to city officials, explaining the horror she had been going through, begging them for compassion.

"I live to gamble," she wrote. "I work so that I can get money to gamble. I sometimes go without food so that I can gamble. I don't pay my bills so that I can gamble ... My life is consumed by gambling.

"After I gamble away the last nickel in my purse, I go home and cry and pray that God will help me, that someone will help me, stop."

But Drew didn't get any compassion from city officials.

She was fired from her job, shunned by her co-workers and charged in a criminal theft investigation. In the middle of her despair, she tried to kill herself by drinking a bottle of scotch and overdosing on Valium, but she survived.

Today, after pleading guilty to theft charges, she is on two years probation and has paid the city $7,445 in restitution. She is about to lose her home to creditors in Bankruptcy Court, and she remains unemployed, desperately looking for any kind of job to help her rebuild her life.

The sad part about this story is that Drew is one of thousands of problem gamblers whose lives have been ruined because of their inability to get treatment in a state that prospers greatly from legalized gambling. This is our dirty little secret.

Last year the gambling industry generated more than $9 billion in revenue, but contributed a mere $200,000 to the community's lone clinic for pathological gamblers, the Problem Gambling Center on West Sahara Avenue.

"It's a travesty that, in a $9-billion-a-year industry, so little is spent on gambling as a public health issue," says Robert Hunter, who is treating Drew at the nonprofit clinic. "This story is being played out every week in Las Vegas. People are quietly struggling with this problem, wondering if they're going to go bankrupt, resort to embezzling or simply commit suicide."

The state of Nevada, which collects hundreds of millions of dollars in gaming taxes every year, has been even more derelict. It has never spent a dime helping those addicted to gambling.

We spend millions of dollars luring visitors to live out their vices in Las Vegas, but we can't set aside any money to treat our own residents whose lives are torn apart by the biggest vice we offer.

If only people across the country really knew what happens here.

Drew has tried to get help over the years. She turned to Gamblers Anonymous and found comfort for awhile, but no longterm relief. She also tried conventional therapists, but always ended up being told they weren't qualified to help her.

She only found Hunter by accident. As her troubles came to a head last April, Drew happened to see Hunter quoted in a newspaper article about another professional with a gambling problem and made an appointment with him. She hasn't gambled since, and she considers herself lucky.

But there are thousands more like her who haven't been so lucky. Hunter simply doesn't have the resources to treat everyone. Las Vegas, he says, could use a half-dozen more clinics like his.

How much longer can we sit back and watch those who created this problem do nothing to fix it?