Online Casino Edition – Casino News News about online casinos and gambling

The husband of a woman who killed herself after getting into $100,000 of debt due to gambling said that British Columbian casinos need to have more support in place.

Lost battle

Yoo Choi had moved to Vancouver and opened the Velvet Cafe based on Broadway. But, as her husband, Mark Dawson, explained, she had a compulsive gambling habit which she kept a secret but had been battling to deal with over a number of years.

After she had managed to get into $150,000 of debt playing at Edgewater Casino in Vancouver, she eventually registered herself into an exclusion program. Here she received counseling and her husband believed that she had managed to overcome her addiction.

But, on June the 16^th she phoned him, apologizing for the fact that she had started to gamble again. After this, she disappeared only to be found 26 days later floating in Lynn Canyon which is located on Vancouver’s North Shore.

Increased suicide risk

Dawson expressed his regret at not being aware that a problem gambler is two times more likely to commit suicide than any other form of addict.

“If I had known, I might have been able to take her home,” he said. “It wasn’t on my radar at all. I might have been able to say, ‘let me hear you start the car, stay on the phone with me while you drive home.’”

Gambling addictions that lead to suicide are not that uncommon. It was revealed that one man who murdered first his partner and then himself back in January had lost $200,000 in a local casino. Back in 2002 another man killed his wife, set fire to their home, then committed suicide. An inquest later found that he had got into financial difficulties due to gambling.

It is estimated that 200 problem gamblers commit suicide every year in Canada. In BC alone, the Coroners Service released that there were 34 suicides related to gambling between 2003 and 2010.

According to Professor Robert Williams, it is hard to truly estimate the figure due to the fact that in general a suicide is not linked officially to gambling. Williams, an expert in gambling addictions at the Alberta Gambling Research Institute as well as teacher at the University of Lethbridge, estimates that in Alberta about 20 percent of suicides are related to gambling in some way. Also, as per his estimate, for each person who kills themselves due to problem gambling, four others try but fail.

Program ineffective

At the Edgewater Casino and in other BC-Based casinos, facial recognition technology is used to help keep out problem gamblers who have put themselves on the voluntary self-exclusion program. Yoo Choi herself was escorted out of Edgewater a number of times. But, Dawson sees the program as ineffective in that there was no penalty connected to her lapses and he was not made aware of them.

“It’s a wake-up call … If you know somebody, be a little bit more aware of the repercussions,” Dawson said. “It can go, as I found out, beyond rock bottom.”

State lawmakers in Massachusetts are losing the battle against introducing casino gambling onto the island. Tim Madden, a Nantucket state representative, was the only one out of 32 legislators who went against the casino gaming bill. In the previous week the bill had had a good reception and been approved by a large margin.

If the legislation goes ahead, it will pave the way for three resort casino and these will built in different areas of the state. One of them is planned to be a single slot parlor and another a tribal casino based in Southeastern Massachusetts which will be owned by Mashpee Wampanoag.

State financial losses

Many critics are against the casinos because they believe gambling can bring with it a number of dangerous social problems and add no value to a community. But, this is not Madden’s biggest concern. He believes that allowing this form of legislation will not be beneficial to the district because money might be diverted for tourism and various other projects away from the region. The region in question is made up of Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and certain areas of Falmouth.

“My concern is the infrastructure dollars; what you spend on roads and maintenance gets diverted to make these resorts,” Madden said. “And tourism dollars would be getting devoted to promote casinos.”

He went on to explain that there might be financial losses as opposed to gains within the region. “I don’t see jobs being created in the district and we may lose people here on the island who may follow those jobs,” he said. “All I hope is that it provides the jobs and the income that it is purported to do. It’s not the path I wanted to go down, but I don’t begrudge it.”

House approval

In a roll call which took place last Wednesday, the legislation was approved by the House 132-32. The bill will now go to the state Senate where also it is expected to be approved. Once this has happened, it will be sent over to Governor Deval Patrick.

Bad for the community

State Senator Dan Wolf, who was also in discussions with Madden, explained that he saw the vote against the legislation as “non-negotiable.” He takes a clear stance against the state lawmakers even thinking about the legalization of casino resort within the commonwealth.

“You’re looking at two of the strongest anti-casino legislators on Beacon Hill,” Wolf commented on Madden and himself.

Wolf’s impression of gambling is that it does not bring any good into a community. “There’re so many things, like the social problems, the economic benefits it promises and doesn’t deliver, it’s wrong on so many levels,” he explained. “It’s an insult to the people of Massachusetts that your elected representatives are even talking about this.”