"Casinos put more money into Missouri's economy than they take out, two St. Louis area university economists conclude in a study of the riverboats' financial effect on the state" (Alm 1).

"The gaming entertainment industry has undergone many changes in the last decade. Most recently, it has emerged as one of the greatest contributors to our nation's economy. More than one million Americans work in the gaming industry, either through direct or indirect employment, and a recent study indicates that the gaming industry provides better and higher paying jobs than other industries that provide products or services such as the soft drink, cellular phone, video cassette sales and rentals and cable TV industries" (Gaming Industry Myths & Facts).

"Local businesses benefit from increased tourism and newly-created employment opportunities generated by new casinos .... Experience has shown that the introduction of gaming-entertainment will expand the economic pie and help strengthen the economy in local communities" (Gaming Industry Myths & Facts).

"Casino patrons are a slice of America, statistically above the national average in education, income and employment. According to a survey conducted by Harrah's and the Home Testing Institute, casino players have a median income of $39,000 compared to the U.S. median of $3 1,000; 52 percent of all new players have some college education; and 41 percent of all new players are white-collar employees" (Gaming Industry Myths & Facts).

"The myth that organized crime owns, operates or even influences casinos is a canard spread by political opponents without regard to facts .... As all major law enforcement authorities attest, states with strong gaming regulation and enforcement do not experience problems with organized crime activity. Gaming-entertainment companies are businesses owned by the same people who own Disney, IBM, General Motors Corporation and Shell Oil--stockholders" (Gaming Industry Myths & Facts).

"Across the region and across the country, states with well-established lotteries find themselves at a fork in the road, a political dilemma for government officials who rely on the games' profits to bolster their budgets ..... In the evolution of a state lottery, the early years tend to be filled with euphoria about the rapidly growing new source of government revenue. But as the lottery matures, profits often come to be seen less as a windfall than a necessity. And the acquired appetite for those profits is not always matched by continuous growth in sales" (Chinoy 1).

"An intense form of wagering copied from casinos--video lottery terminals that provide instant action mimicking card games or slot machines--has become a top seller for the five state lotteries that offer it and prompted some of the nation's highest lottery growth rates in recent years .... But critics contend that video gambling is the most addictive form of lottery play, and tales of lives wrecked by its allure have generated controversy across the country" (Chinoy 2).

"Bringing lottery play into the home--by telephone, television or the Intemet--could increase the lottery industry's contact with some of its most resistant markets, including young adults and upscale consumers    .... While most state lotteries, have a presence on the Intemet where they tout their games, none has ventured into the murky legal and cultural waters of selling chances online" (Chinoy 2).

"Today's U.S. gambling scene 'is a world transformed,' noted Eugene Martin Christiansen in his annual industry analysis for Gamin2 & Waizerin2 Business, a leading trade journal. ... As Christiansen pointed out, gaming in facilities run by American Indian tribes has become an industry pace-setter .... In 1992, wagering at Indian casinos rose by nearly
$10 billion over 1991--a 240 percent increase" (Gambling Boom 1).

"Video gambling also posted triple-digit growth in 1992, rising by $972 million, or 274 percent. Based on familiar card and number games like poker and keno, video machines attract heavy patronage because they offer virtually nonstop action and frequent jackpots. They are expected to remain a dependable state-lottery cash cow for many years to come" (Gambling Boom 2).

"Meanwhile, as Christiansen [see above] suggests the gaming industry has disarmed critics by promoting itself as a source of wholesome entertainment. This marketing strategy can best be appreciated in Las Vegas, which boasts several new spectacle properties and theme parks that appeal to the U.S. family vacation trade" (Gambling Boom 2).
"Debates on the pros and cons of legalized wagering often center on Indian-run gaming. Since a 1987 Supreme Court decision and a 1988 act of Congress affirmed the right of American Indians to establish casino gaming on their reservations, dozens of tribes jumped at the opportunity" (Gambling Boom 3).

"Indeed, Indian leaders cite jobs and income as the main benefits of tribal gaming. Gross revenue from wagering on Indian reservations in 1992 accounted for only 5 percent of the gaming industry total. But that minuscule share represented $1.5 billion, a huge windfall for the relatively small number of tribal members involved" (Gambling Boom 4).

"Next to casino table and slot games, sports betting is considered the most popular form of gambling in the United States. But since wagering on team sports is illegal in almost all jurisdictions, nationwide data are considered imprecise
Former Forbes magazine Executive Editor James Cook wrote in 1992 that illegal betting in the U.S. may run as high as $100 billion a year. And that estimate doesn't include the 'additional tens of billions' wagered on sports events in office pools and TV parties or bar-side bets among friends, he added" (Gambling Boom 5).

"According to Lorenz, a psychologist, sports are uniquely attractive to youngsters. Furthermore, The knowledge that children would acquire through sports lotteries would quickly lead them to illegal sports gambling, once they also discover the greater odds and thrill of risk such illegal gambling offers'. . . . Even now, says Lorenz, studies suggest that there is more compulsive gambling among teenage gamblers (7 to 11 percent are compulsive gamblers) than among adult gamblers (up to 5 percent). One reason for the disparity, she believes, is that, 'We're telling our children it's OK to bet. Nowadays, a family will go to a restaurant where mom and dad can play a keno machine on the table. Or, it'll take a pleasure cruise where mom and dad can gamble all the family's money away. That's what we're exposing our children to" (Gambling Boom 7).

"Not everyone considers compulsive gambling a mental, or organic, disorder. A rival school of thought holds that problem gambling is 'learned behavior"' (Gambling Boom 8).

"In the first week she tried to stop gambling, Betty was so restless that she gained several pounds eating chocolate bonbons. She had already wasted her mother's inheritance on riverboat gambling. But the monotony and the desire to gamble money she didn't have prompted her to go back to a riverboat earlier this month .... She walked on board. Amid
the glittering slot machines and black jack tables, she started to feel tremendous guilt. Just before the boat embarked for another cruise, Betty got off. She thought about suicide. Days later, she related her frustrations to perhaps the only people who could understand-- fellow compulsive gamblers--in a Lisle church basement. "I know I've got to stop gambling, because it's controlling my life" (Olson 1).

"Cindy, a 40-year-old Yorkville woman, estimates she lost $200,000 on Illinois riverboats, mostly at Hollywood Casino. She is filing for bankruptcy. In the meantime, she is trying to supplement her income with a big score at the casino. . . .'Gambling screws up your perception of money,' she said. 'When people say $500 isn't a lot of money, it is. Isn't it?"' (Olson 2).

"In 1992 Americans lost $30 billion playing legal games of risk. That's six times what they spent on movie tickets, and more than the amount spent on books, recorded music, attractions such as amusement parks, and movies combined. Between 1982 and 1990, Americans expanded their legal gambling nearly twice as quickly as their incomes rose" (Reed).

"The drawback, documented exhaustively by Charles Clotfelter and Philip Cook in their 1991 book Selling Hope, is that many forms of gambling are regressive--that is, poor people spend a bigger proportion of their incomes on them than rich people do, unlike graduated income taxes" (Reed 3).

"Whether in the end gambling will prevail in most states, developing into a large and socially accepted industry, remains an open question. Some experts warm that the end result of the proliferation of gambling might be market saturation; with so much competition, casinos might see their rampant growth evaporate, as the already slowing expansion of lottery revenues portends" (Reed 6).