Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2004 | 11:08 a.m.
So we are one of the meanest cities in America toward the homeless -- again.
The National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington rates us fourth meanest, which actually is better than last year's No. 1 ranking. But that's nothing much to brag about.
If compassion is what you're looking for in Sin City, a glimmer is all you're going to find.
We spend millions of dollars each year on a marketing campaign to encourage visitors to come here and do the things they wouldn't dare do at home.
Yet we devote few resources to the social costs that come with our booming tourism-based economy.
And if you think we're mean to the homeless, look at how we treat those addicted to gambling, the state's cash cow.
We don't even recognize problem gambling as a public health issue in this state.
No wonder the United Health Foundation, a nonprofit national organization, this week ranked Nevada 37th among the 50 states in overall health. We slipped a notch from 36th place last year, which means we're headed in the wrong direction.
Some of our social problems, including homelessness, are related to our failure to treat problem gamblers.
UNLV sociology professor Fred Preston, a local homeless expert, says a 1999 valleywide study he did found a direct correlation between gambling and homelessness.
Of those surveyed, he says, 22.9 percent acknowledged that gambling led to their homelessness. About 17 percent of those interviewed said they considered themselves problem gamblers.
With the growth of gambling in the past five years, those figures are likely to be even higher today.
We never seem to be short on problem gambling horror stories.
In March I brought you the story of Christine Drew, a senior city management analyst who contributed to our rising crime rate by embezzling $10,155 in city funds to fuel her gambling habit. Drew never got the help she needed to turn her life around before she resorted to stealing.
Just last month we heard about the tragedy of Nellis Air Force Sgt. Kevin Jay Johnson, who was charged with committing a string of bank robberies to support his gambling addiction. He, too, apparently never got the help he needed.
And there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, more just like Drew and Johnson, whose actions are crying for help.
We are the nation's model for legalized gambling but, according Dr. Robert Hunter, a clinical psychologist who treats problem gamblers, we also are the only state that spends no money to come to the aid of those addicted.
Some states, with far less gambling than ours, Hunter says, spend millions of dollars to treat problem gamblers.
But in Nevada last year, problem gambling proponents couldn't even persuade the Legislature to set aside $250,000 to set up a treatment fund. The measure was killed in 2001, as well.
"We are way behind the game," says Hunter, who runs the Problem Gambling Center, which amazingly is the only nonprofit clinic of its kind in Las Vegas.
"We should acknowledge that pathological gambling is a legitimate and treatable disorder and that on a political, financial and humanitarian level, it makes infinitely more sense to treat it than to ignore it."
In Las Vegas, however, the casinos would rather make dollars than sense.
So we don't acknowledge the problem.
As residents, we like to say that the real Las Vegas is a normal community outside the star-studded glamorous one we see on the Strip.
It is, except it's just meaner.
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