Legalized Gambling Legalized gambling is a low stakes fast action game that produces easy revenue for money hungry states. What I intend to prove to you is that legalized gambling is not all that it is cracked up to be. First, the facts, a survey done by Dr. Henry Lesieur of Gamblers anonymous says that twenty six percent (26%) had a divorce or were separated. Thirty six percent (36%) said they had lost or quit a job because of gambling. Twenty one percent (21%) said they had filed for bankruptcy. Forty four percent (44%) said they had stolen from work to pay gambling debts. Eighteen percent (18%) said they had gambling related arrests. Sixty six percent (66%) said they had contemplated suicide, and sixteen percent (16%) said they had attempted suicide. Numerous other studies done have shown that all forms of crime have gone up in the places where there is legalized gambling. Not only does gambling hurt the crime rate, it also hurts the economy. For every dollar that is earned from legalized gambling, three to seven dollars are taken from the community. These three dollars are most commonly taken from restaurant and bar owners because they cannot compete with the free liquor and food the casinos give out. Likewise with jobs, for every job legalized gambling creates, two to three jobs are lost, again these jobs mostly from restaurants and bars. Aside from taking the rich man s money, the most common victim is the poor person, spending what little money he or she has on almost impossible odds of striking it rich. Thus, they must resort to crime to compensate for their loses. While doing this, they set a bad example for their children, teaching them that luck, not hard work and education gives us success.

As I mentioned before, many people think that bringing in legalized gambling will improve the economy and development. The truth is that gamblers only hurt the area where they are in, businesses look for places with low crime rate and high potential, the cities with legalized gambling have just the opposite. There are three basic types of gamblers, pathological, being the worst, they cannot stop. Compulsive, being addicted but have some control, and regular, being the controlled and they know when to quit. (your basic bingo player)Pathological gamblers cost their cities 13,800 dollars per gambler, not to mention incarceration costs for the crimes they commit to get the money to gamble. In conclusion, I would like to say that if we legalized gambling in Pennsylvania, its problems would greatly outweigh its benefits. The money that would otherwise be used for gambling, could be used to keep local businesses alive. Also gambling tears apart families, forcing children to grow up by themselves, for their parents for the most part are at the casinos trying to hit it big. So I feel that bringing legalized gambling to Pennsylvania would be very bad not just for the economy, but for every one involved.