Compulsive Gambling

If you are a betting man (or woman), America is the place for you. From megalopolis gambling cities like Las Vegas and Atlantic City to Native American-owned casinos, Americans love to gamble and casinos love making money off of that compulsion. Legalized gambling also exists in the form of myriad state lotteries designed to provide a few residents with winnings and the state government with the lion's share of the profits. Add to this keno boards, sports betting, BINGO, and a host of other small-time gambling opportunities and operations, and it becomes obvious that Americans are a society that love to gamble. So, too, the advent of online electronic legalized gambling makes it possible for people to gamble 24 hours-a-day, 7 days-a-week from the convenience of their own homes. Unfortunately, for some people this love for, availability of, and easy access to gambling becomes a compulsion and addiction, often with disastrous economic and emotional consequences. According to experts "15 million adults are at risk for problem gambling" (How To 16). Of course, for casinos and casino management, these trends are positive. According to an article in a November, 2000, article "Legal betting is now a $30 billion nationwide business" (Stoil 35). This analysis will discuss the changes in morality that have enabled gambling to evolve from a concept viewed as an immoral activity mainly associated with organized crime to a c

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pioneered research on this form of psychological illness, helping identify pathological gambling as a psychological illness. He defined the condition as follows "An addictive illness in which the subject is driven by an overwhelming uncontrollable impulse to gamble" (Stoil 35). Like other addictive behaviors from drug abuse to alcoholism, there are research studies of a recent nature which have discovered evidence that points to compulsive or pathological gambling as an illness with a genetic component. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, studied 3,359 pairs of twins in order to determine any genetic influence on gambling (Compulsive 7). Researchers used the nine behaviors which identify compulsive gambling on the subjects, including ones such as spending more than intended, irritability if prevented from gambling, and sacrificing important events in order to gamble. The studies results showed that there may be a genetic predisposition to gambling: The prevalence of each gambling behavior was higher in identical than fraternal twins. If one identical twin exhibited a particular behavior, the odds were high that his or her twin would exhibit that behavior as well. The odds were

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