Gambling: Mapping the American Moral Landscape

8 The Unproblematic Normalization of Gambling in America

193 8 The Unproblematic Normalization of Gambling in America ♠ John Dombrink For the last forty years in America, the question of what society is to do with certain legally prohibited but socially desired activities like gambling, drugs, prostitution, and abortion have occupied legal scholars and reformers. Following the lead of the British Wolfenden report in 1957,1 and leading through legal writings and arguments over the next decade or so by Schur, Packer, Kadish, Skolnick, Geis, and others, American legal scholars in the 1960s focused on the philosophical and pragmatic costs to society in enforcing laws that had, at best, divided public support.2 Among the several legal issues which drove these discussions —illicit drug use, abortion, prostitution, and gambling— gambling has separated itself into its own category as a result of its relatively uncontested normalization in America, as well as its enormous growth in scope and size. The growth of the legal gaming industry in the United States over that time period has been remarkable. From legal gambling revenues of $10 billion in 1982, we now find revenues of $84 billion for 2005 and legal gambling in forty-eight states.3 We are witnessing an expanding Las Vegas with growing “RDE” (retail, dining, and entertainment ) revenues and high room occupancy rates. Indian gaming 194 John Dombrink has spread to over 230 tribes in twenty-eight states,4 and hybrid forms of gaming—such as “racinos” featuring casino games at horse tracks—have proliferated. When even William Bennett, the moralistic former education secretary, CNN political commentator, and author of the Book of Virtues,5 was found to be an inveterate gambler with hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses, he explained it away as “only gambling.” While many progressives cheered at Bennett’s fall and his apparent hypocrisy, he also gave witness to the fact that gambling for most Americans has stepped beyond the area of contested morality and “victimless crime” considerations and has become an accepted leisure activity, like movies. When, in September 2007, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick announced a plan that supported bringing as many as three casinos to that state, it was met with support from certain quarters of the state government and opposition from other well-placed leaders and organizations. In detailing the plan, the Democratic governor explained: I believe authorizing three resort casinos will have significant economic benefits to Massachusetts. Done the right way, destination resort casinos can play a useful part, along with other initiatives in life sciences, renewable energy and education reform, in providing our Commonwealth with sustainable, long-term economic growth.6 Though a relatively new governor, Patrick chose to address fiscal problems through the offset of gambling revenue, a path that many state governments have taken in various forms over the last forty years. It is not unusual for the governor of a state to champion gambling. In the expansion of legal gambling that has taken place over the last forty years in the United States, many governors of both major parties have supported the expansion of gambling, mostly for either revenue enhancement or for economic development possibilities, or a combination of the two. Certain vocal critics in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have eyed gambling skeptically. They have tried to counter the exhortations of those who, in considering the Massachusetts geography, support gambling expansion as an opportunity to try and “bring home” some of the gambling dollars that go over the various state borders, to New Hampshire (as in the early lottery days) or to Connecticut (in the current casino lure of the Mohegan The Unproblematic Normalization of Gambling in America 195 Sun and Foxwoods Indian casinos). Some critics immediately questioned the economic development and revenue potential of the 2007 Patrick plan.7 Others warned of the possible deleterious effects upon vulnerable populations, such as youth.8 The evolving “normalization” that Patrick’s proposal can be located in has also generated pockets of concern among those who point to the ill effects of the “abc” problems of legal gambling —addiction, bankruptcy, and crime. Despite the enormous growth in gambling in America over the past forty years, there still are areas in which we have held back its growth, typically for fear of its effect on vulnerable populations. Still, gambling has been increasingly normalized far beyond the status of its companion activities in the 1960s legal reform discussions, most of which remain highly contested. But first I’ll provide some...