A US casino boom has boosted state funds,but gambling addiction is an increasingly neglected problemMichael Rosen listens to the wreckage that the $1bn gambling industry has wrought in Maryland. He listens to the man, $400000 in debt, and whose wife threw him out and told him he couldn’t see his kids again unless he gave up gambling. He listens to the gambler who went on a three-day blackjack binge without sleeping and rarely eating. He listens to the woman facing a jail term for embezzling $135000 to feed her gambling addiction.
Rosen,who helps manage the state’s increasingly busy 1-800-GAMBLER helpline, commiserates with the desperate and directs many to Gamblers Anonymous meetings. But he can’t propose any free treatment programmes because Maryland, or one of the United States’s most concentrated casino markets,doesn’t offer any. That sets it apart from Delaware, Connecticut and many other casino states, or even as experts believe that gambling addiction in Maryland is on the rise.
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Source: theguardian.com