“This Dreadful Vice”

“One vast casino.” Such was the description of Regency England by the venerable historian G.M Trevelyan. Gaming, long popular, reached Gaming, long popular, reached a feverish peak in the early 19th century. It was ubiquitous: from the grandest country homes of the upper classes to the slums of the poorest of the poor. Wagers were the preferred way to settle many a dispute. And such activity was by no means confined to men. Socially influential women were chief purveyors of and active participants in the sporting life among the well-to-do. The gentry often engaged in “deep gaming,” continuous gambling in one place over a long period of time for high stakes, including lands—the very source of their wealth.

But then the Victorians came along and matters took a decidedly different turn. The industrious, thrifty and pious middle class had little time for anything that might be fun, especially if it sprang from the irrationality of chance. Laws that had long been dormant were called into action, and others were newly legislated so that this “dreadful vice,” as one critic characterized it, could be eradicated. But it was not. Like many activities that are criminalized, it took on a subterranean existence, thriving among those who needed to game whatever the hazards of lawlessness.

Such were the demimonde conditions of games of chance in Canada until the 1960s. Policing the ponies and smashing poker dens were jobs for the vice squads, although the majority of citizens over time came to view criminalization of the roulette wheel as a wasteful and oppressive use of the heaviest machinery of the state. An elite cadre of Protestantism persisted in shoring up the flagging support for prohibition, but calls for the criminal law to recede eventually met with success. In 1969, Pierre Trudeau’s omnibus bill decriminalized life for gays, liberalized abortion and pushed back the criminal law prohibiting gambling in one fell swoop.

Thereafter, there was jockeying among the federal and provincial governments over which would have the most say—and dollars—regarding this new area of regulation and revenue. For a variety of reasons, by the mid 1980s the provinces had prevailed: the “casino state” was ushered in. By the 1990s it was flourishing, a highly regulated, government-dominated, cash-producing industry.

In 1992, the net revenue in Canada from various forms of gambling was $2.7 billion; by 2006 it was $13.3 billion. Between those years the percentage of growth in gross domestic product attributable to wagering outpaced all other industries; employment associated with gaming rose from 11,000 to 40,000. In Ontario, in 2005, net revenues to the provincial government from gambling were approximately $2 billion, about 6 percent of its total revenue. And there are so many opportunities to take a chance: to give but one example, as of 2007, there were 88,000 electronic gaming machines (slots and video lottery terminals) in this country to entertain, but also to mesmerize the unwary.

In all of this governments have become deeply conflicted, since they both regulate gambling enterprises and benefit from its revenues. Similar conflicts exist regarding other “appetites,” with governments simultaneously regulating alcohol and tobacco and deriving revenue from their taxation. But with gaming, the conflict is particularly manifest since many governments, including those in Canada, wage a near-monopolistic control of the industry. Such dominance paves the way not only for responding to a hefty demand among a large segment of the population for many kinds of gaming, but also for intensifying that demand through sophisticated, glitzy and well-financed marketing schemes. Particularly in the case of problem gamblers, there are insistent questions regarding the extent of government’s responsibility for the trail of misery that is left by those who become ensnared by the lure of chance.

Which brings us to the collection of essays under review. Casino State: Legalized Gambling in Canada, edited by James F. Cosgrave and Thomas R. Klassen, is a success. Its individual pieces are well written and accessible and lay out many of the critical issues regarding gambling in today’s Canada. There are chunks of the story missing: too little said about the many aspects of problem gambling, not enough about how the feds were persuaded to largely vacate an area that is so profitable; there is sparse treatment of gambling on Indian reserves and the extravagant claim that such is a manifestation of self-government; and virtually no attention is paid to cyberspace and the host of issues it raises in terms of gambling and its regulation.

That said, all of the contributions are insightful regarding the dreadful vice, but there are several of special interest for those, such as the present reviewer, who care to focus on the regulation of excessive consumption, including problem gambling.

Ray MacNeil’s essay, “Government as Gambling Regulator and Operator: The Case of Electronic Gaming Machines,” makes the important point that not all kinds of gambling are equal in the impacts that they produce in terms of those prone to impaired control in gaming. Although findings vary somewhat, prevalence studies indicate that something like 6.9 percent of all adults are either problem gamblers (2.1 percent) or at risk in that regard (4.8 percent). Industry advocates like to point to the 2.1 percent figure and suggest that this is a low number, especially when compared to the entertainment that is provided to all the rest who play and with the economic benefits for various public programs that gambling revenues help to underwrite. However, as MacNeil clearly indicates, whatever is to be made of those global figures, they mask much higher rates of problem gambling associated with particular kinds of gaming. Such is the case with electronic gaming machines, mentioned earlier, and especially VLTs (which are dispersed in the wider community in bars, etc.).

MacNeil makes his point regarding VLTs and the much higher rate of problem gambling associated with them by drawing on statistics from Nova Scotia. Prevalence studies for that province suggest that almost 90 percent of adults in a recent year engaged in some form of gambling. However, only about 5 percent regularly play VLTs. Nevertheless, VLTs are associated with more than half of all past or current problems with gambling.

MacNeil also indicates that accessibility is at least one of the significant factors in this association. Nova Scotia alone has 2,367 VLTs in bars and 1,000 slot machines in casinos dispersed throughout the province. Ontario and British Columbia have prudently banned VLTs. But they do allow other electronic gaming machines—slots—at gambling establishments. Another analysis of prevalence data, not mentioned by MacNeil, found that playing electronic gaming machines (slots or VLTs) was the strongest predictor of problem gambling, even after accounting for gender, education and other forms of gambling. MacNeil asks a trenchant question: “If over 50 per cent of all the revenue of a particular product is being collected from problem gamblers, as is the case with VLTs in Canada, … what targets should our governments set for the reduction of that financial contribution by problem gamblers?”

In his essay “Youth Gambling: A Canadian Perspective,” Jeffrey Derevensky focuses on kids. Although gambling has been largely decriminalized, there are a few remaining prohibitions. As with other areas involving potential harm, such as smoking and drinking, the law takes the position that children, just because they are children, lack the judgement to accept responsibility for engaging in these activities and thus bans them from doing so. There is the additional reason that early onset of the harmful activity is closely associated with serious issues: the development of addiction in the case of smoking, high rates of serious accidents in the case of alcohol and impaired control in the case of gambling. As a result, most jurisdictions prohibit youths from gambling (and drinking and being sold cigarettes). But as any student of legal policy knows, there is often a gap between the law on the books and the law in action, sometimes a yawning one.

Such prohibitions in the case of gambling seem to be effective in some areas, for example, regarding entrance to casinos. However, there are very substantial problems with enforcement in other areas, such as the sale of lottery tickets and the unpoliced aspects of various forms of wagering on the internet.

Young people gaming, especially to excess, has many causes. One that Derevensky highlights is the merchandising of the products, particularly to young people. He cites, for instance, the Virginia lottery and its advertising campaigns linked with NASCAR racing, a highly popular activity for young males, and several other U.S. states using promotions that include the opportunity to win motorcycles. As for Canada, he points to the dollars available to peddle games of chance and observes that “with huge advertising budgets, provincial lottery corporations have been able to target adolescents directly or indirectly.”

Derevensky also examines prevention programs that are centred on young people. There are lots of questions regarding which ones are effective and, if so, why. There is also considerable debate about whether the focus of such programs should be abstinence or “harm reduction,” a much-invoked concept in excessive consumption circles that focuses on minimizing the negative impacts of the questioned activity. As the author points out, an emphasis on abstinence need not arise from extravagant moral scruples or some misplaced insistence on strict obedience to laws prohibiting adolescents from gambling, but rather on the pragmatic grounds that the later the onset of gambling, the less likely that the player will become one with impaired control. Thus educational programs are left to navigate between urging refraining on the one hand and, on the other, taking steps to minimize harm based on the stark reality that some adolescents are inevitably going to be lured into gambling.

Jan McMillen’s article, “Gambling Policy and Regulation in Australia,” demonstrates the benefit of comparative research in terms of various societies and how they address a set of issues, in this case gambling policy in Australia and Canada. In this instance, the comparison does not flatter us. Australia’s policies have frailties and suffer from fragmentation because of different positions taken at the federal and state levels. But that country’s regulation regarding gambling, on the whole, seems both stronger and more cohesive than comparable efforts in Canada. There are a number of reasons for this. Two that are particularly salient are the origins of regulating gambling in Australia and that country’s embrace of the precautionary principle.

Unlike Canada (and England), Australia did not go through a period of Victorian sanctimony, at least not regarding gambling. From the start, settlers played all manner of games of chance; the forces of censure quickly became muted in the face of gaming as a widespread recreation among all groups. As a result, McMillen asserts that regulation, rather than prohibition, was an initial premise and one that has buttressed official policy making down to the present. Furthermore, there has been “close institutionalized association between legal gambling, community values, and social purposes.”

The second, and related, reason for stronger and more cohesive policy making in Australia, especially regarding gambling’s harmful impacts, is the influence of the precautionary principle. This approach suggests that it is appropriate to take protective measures in the face of reasonable evidence that an activity will produce certain harms. In other words, proponents of protective measures should not have to produce conclusive evidence that negative effects will occur; it is better to be safe than sorry. Embracing such a principle generally favours regulatory action. If such action is judged to have a reasonable prospect of blunting the anticipated negative consequences of the activity, the onus for demonstrating that it should not be implemented shifts onto those who object to it. McMillen discusses a number of ways this principle has influenced the regulation of gambling in Australia. One is that in Queensland the relevant legislation has been amended to make it clear that various aspects of gambling should be permitted only when, on balance, they are of benefit to the community.

Casino State has much to offer. Its readership should by no means be confined to those who study the many aspects of gambling. Anyone who is interested in policy making and, even more generally, the complexities of Canadian society, will learn much from this collection of essays. The English member of Parliament James Duff, quoted in the title of this review, was wrong. Gambling, itself, is not a dreadful vice. Problem gambling may be a contender for that description. But that characterization is perhaps most aptly reserved for the machinations designed by governments to ever increase the cash that flows from games of chance without due regard for the negative consequences that ensue. Nowhere are such costs more clearly on display than with the sad folk who become ensnared and lose control even as the state insists that they are being entertained.