In belief that this year will be different because his organization intends to show that video lottery revenue can be replaced without the budget chaos, Dan Brendtro, a Sioux Falls lawyer, is heading up Forward South Dakota (www.forwardsouthdakota.org), the fourth campaign to end video lottery in South Dakota.
In 1989, South Dakota was the first ever to legalize video lottery receiving 50% of the 2005 $220 million video lottery income. Poker, keno, blackjack and bingo games of quarters and nickels are among the variations featured in the Video machines with a bet limit of $2 a pop with a $1,000 top prize.
South Dakota Lottery website confirms 8,300 terminals in 1,400 establishments operate across the state.
Video lottery has been called "the crack cocaine" of gambling because it is so addictive. The percentage of gambling addicts being treated for gambling machines was 92.3%.
A few other statistics regarding people in the study shows that 38.5% were previously treated for gambling, 63.4% gamble on holidays, 80.6% replaced other activities with gambling, 41.9% have work absence due to gambling related activities, 87.6% gamble using family funds, 89.5% were unsuccessful trying to cut down or stop, 70.5% finance gambling from illegal acts, and 81.3% thought of gambling as a way to solve their financial problems.
A report entitled "Video Lottery and Treatment for Pathological Gambling: A Natural Experiment in South Dakota" published in January 1996 in the South Dakota Journal of Medicine, calls the 100-day 1994 shutdown of video lottery via state Supreme Court ruling that video lottery was unconstitutional, a "natural experiment" where treatments for gambling addiction dropped 93.5%, which also states that 97.9% of gambling addicts were addicted to video lottery, not other types of gambling.
Sunday, November 19 , 2006
John M. Thorpe
