Legalized Gambling as a Mainstream Leisure Activity

Native American tribes have reaped enormous economic benefits from legalized gambling. Tribes operate 225 gambling establishments nationwide, which took in an estimated $15.2 billion in 1992, a figure that is expected to grow by $500 million a year (Hirshey, 1994, p. 37). Native Americans operate the world's largest casino, Foxwoods in Ledyard, Connecticut, which generates revenues of more than $600 million annually.

Because Native American tribes use a significant portion of their gambling proceeds for economic development, some have started to question the wisdom of dependency on gaming revenues. An example is the Cherokee Nation, based in Oklahoma. The nation's bingo operation nets nearly $3 million dollars annually, but faces stiff competition from the gaming operations of other tribes and is gearing up to contend with the stiffest competition of all--the state of Oklahoma: "Native Americans . . . believe that once a st

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e activity of pathological gamblers creates wide-ranging social damage which averages $200 annually per each adult in regions where casinos proliferate: "Gambling social costs include direct regulatory costs, lost productivity costs, direct crime costs, in which would be included apprehension, adjudication and incarceration costs, as well as harder-to-price costs such as suicide, family disintegration and such things as increased car accidents" (U.S. Congress, 1994, p. 9). The Maryland Task Force on gambling addiction found that Maryland's compulsive gambling population cost the state $1.5 billion per year in direct and indirect social costs and a total cumulative indebtedness of $4 billion (U.S. Congress, 1994, pp. 83-84). In regions with unchecked casino development, concomitant increases have been noted in the number of pawn shops and local chapters of Gambler's Anonymous. Legalized gambling will likely continue to proliferate in the future for several reasons. First, state governments have become dependent on the revenues generated; 37 states operate lotteries and 23 states allow casinos within their jurisdictions. Hawaii and Utah are the only states that prohibit all forms of gaming. New casinos, in particular, initi
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