MEDILL NEWS SERVICE
Underage Gambling: Taking a Chance on America's Youth
By ASHANTE DOBBS and CARRIE SEIM
MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON - Kevin Groth was 19 when he first made the hour drive from Iowa State University in Ames to the Native American Meskwaki Casino in Tama. The sophomore biology student and his fraternity brothers were looking for some fun, and for college kids in the middle of Iowa, casinos promised fun in neon Technicolor.

When Groth walked into the 127,669 square foot casino, he had $40 in his pocket. He left with $3,000.

"That was the worst thing that could have ever happened," Groth said in an interview.

Within two years, the Marshalltown, Iowa, youth was $15,000 in debt and had been arrested on felony embezzlement charges. He had stolen thousands of dollars from his job to fund what had become an uncontrollable, secret gambling addict.

The $66 billion gaming industry is a cash cow for state and local governments, as well as a fountain of entertainment for millions of adult Americans. But addiction specialists say young people are increasingly vulnerable to gambling's allure, unable to fully understand the risks and consequences of what is widely promoted as a fun, social activity.

Underage gambling continues to flourish despite recommendations in 1999 by the congressionally mandated National Gambling Impact Study Commission that anyone under 21 should be restricted from gambling or loitering in areas where gambling takes place.

The Commission reported 69 percent of 18- to 24-year olds use computers for hobbies and entertainment, making them a prime target audience for the swelling Internet gambling industry.

Experts say more than half of the nation's adolescents are now gambling in some form, about one third on a weekly basis. More shocking, they say, is the rate of youth with serious gambling problems, a number two to three times higher than that of adult gamblers.

Many adolescents pick up the habit from parents who are unaware of the potential perils of youth gambling. Some adults bring home scratch-off lottery tickets to stuff Christmas stockings or encourage their children to lay down a few dollars on their favorite sports team.

But addiction specialists say the earlier children start gambling, the more difficult it will be for them later in life to responsibly navigate the ubiquitous gambling industry.

In the United States, minimum age requirements vary by state and type of gambling, with most in the 18- to 21-year-old range. In Iowa, the minimum age for casino wagering is 21.

However, the Montreal-based Youth Gambling International estimates most problem gamblers begin gambling, on average, at age 10.

After two years in a Waterloo, Iowa, treatment program, Groth, now 27, has a new appreciation of what he was up against.

"It's so nuts thinking back on it," he says. "I was stealing money just to go to the casinos."

Groth's father, a farmer, and mother, a homemaker, had no idea of their son's addiction until the night he was arrested. Groth says his gambling addiction was easy to hide from friends and family - even himself.

"You look perfectly normal even though you're $10,000 in debt and driving back and forth to the casino every night," he told Medill News Service.

For many teenagers, experts say, gambling is as common and seemingly benign as playing a video game or instant messaging.

"This is the first generation that will grow up for their entire lives when gambling is not only legal but supported by the government and endorsed by their family members," says Jeffrey Derevensky, co-director of Youth Gambling International.

"Gambling has become the new rite of passage," he says. "Instead of going to the bar when you get old enough, you go to the casinos."

Derevensky estimates that between 65 percent and 80 percent of North American high school students gamble in some form. Even more troubling, a 1999 National Research Council study reported between 4 percent and 7 percent of adolescents have a serious gambling problem - more than double the rate for adults.

Gambling industry leaders insist they do not encourage underage gambling, and in fact, work to prevent it by investing profits into gambling prevention and treatment programs.

"We are totally opposed to young people gambling," says Frank Fahrenkopf, president and CEO of the American Gaming Association.

Farenkopf says the fact that the percentage of gamblers with serious problems is higher in underage populations demonstrates that gambling is just like any experimental behavior kids try when they're young and soon grow out of.

"After they're exposed to it for awhile, they don't continue it," he says. "Just like some kids who smoked in college don't smoke anymore or don't drink like they used to drink."

Farenkopf says the gambling industry does a "very, very good job" of keeping underage kids from slipping into casinos. "Do some get by? Yeah. But by God, if they gamble and they're caught, the casino suffers severe remedies."

Derevensky acknowledges the casino gambling industry has made strides to prevent underage betting, but suggests the motivation behind those initiatives might be fear of a societal backlash against gambling and its potential problems.

"They're afraid of killing the goose that's laying the golden egg," he says.

WARNING SIGNS

The industry is not alone in blame for underage gambling. Parents and educators often fail to help children by missing telltale signs. Some of those red flags - stealing, cheating and lying - are also hallmarks of other addictions.

"In a manner similar to alcoholism, a youngster does not likely become addicted to gambling the first time they gamble," says Elizabeth George, executive director of the North American Training Institute, a division of the Minnesota Council on Compulsive Gambling.

Young gamblers may max out credit cards, steal, sell prized possessions, or resort to other illicit activities to fund their habit. Derevensky says youth pathological gamblers tend to be manipulative and "ingenious" at finding ways to fund their wagering habits.

"They borrow from everyone under the sun," he says.

GAMBLING & EDUCATION

In recent times, health education has highlighted drug and alcohol addictions, but information on youth gambling addictions has been conspicuously absent, George says.

"If we think about teaching youngsters to gamble in the same manner we think about youngsters and alcohol and drugs, it will put it in the proper perspective," she says. "[Parents] would never in a million years think of having a kiddy cocktail night."

Yet schools often sponsor casino nights that fall under the guise of wholesome fun but seemingly condone gambling, she says.

In the recently published "Futures at Stake: Youth, Gambling and Society," George suggests that health educators and parents incorporate lessons on the dangers of adolescent gambling into discussions about other addictions.

"[Underage gambling] shouldn't be a freestanding, independent concern that is far removed from any of the other concerns that we have for youngsters," she says.

To help combat these problems, George started Wanna Bet, a compulsive gambling prevention and training program targeted at youth.

Other tools aimed at curbing underage gambling are popping up as well. The Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey created an online quiz (www.800gambler.org) where adolescents can find out if they're addicted to gambling.

These are resources Groth wished he had known about before he was arrested for felony theft and sent to live in a halfway house for eight months while completing a full-time addictions treatment program.

After two years of counseling and many long talks with his parents, Groth is back in school as a full-time psychology major at Buena Vista University.

His plans after that?

"I want to go to grad school and get certified for addictions counseling," he says.

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