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More elderly are having problems with gambling
Arizona's booming retirement economy has fostered a quiet side effect: a growing number of senior citizens who turn to racetracks or casinos to stave off loneliness and wind up addicted to gambling. "Their
numbers are growing," said Don Hulen, executive director of the
Arizona Council on Compulsive Gambling. "Many
senior citizens centers send buses out to various activities, and one of
the places they go is to gamble." No reliable
data exist to chart the extent of the phenomenon in Arizona, but estimates
are that more than 67,000 retired citizens in the state have a gambling
problem. Many of them
never even placed a bet until late in life and were taken completely by
surprise by the power it had over them. "I just
wanted to zone out in front of the slot machines," said one elderly
Phoenix area resident, who started going to the casinos at age 55.
"It's real easy to slip into the hypnotic stage. You don't need
sleep, you don't get hungry. It seemed as though I was being fed by the
machine. If I made money, I played it away until it was gone." Elderly women
appear to be the fastest-growing sector of the addicted population.
According to the East Valley chapter of Gamblers Anonymous, more than 75
percent of calls to the telephone help line come from females. Most of the
addicted elderly gamblers in Arizona can be academically classified as
"escape gamblers," Hulen said. Their need to
play horses, lottery card or slot machines comes not from a love of the
game or a desire to win money, but from a gnawing need to get away from
loneliness, boredom, financial difficulties or other emptiness in their
lives. "They
have a need to self-medicate, to escape their problems," Hulen said. A gambling
addiction developed late in life is often even more devastating than one
that shows up early, said Pat Fowler of the Council on Compulsive Gaming
in Florida, another state with a huge retirement population. Older people
on a fixed income find it much more difficult to rebuild their finances
after a gambling addiction takes its toll, she said. And the risk of
suicide tends to be higher for elderly gamblers who lose all their money,
she added. Many casinos
also make a point of aiming marketing campaigns specifically at senior
citizens and go out of their way to make lonely elders feel at home, she
said. A better
picture of the problem in Arizona may develop by the end of the year. The Arizona
Lottery canceled a call for bids on a "prevalence study" this
year because Gov. Jane Hull has signed new gambling compacts with Indian
tribes and Lottery officials assumed that the state's first prevalence
study would be underwritten by the tribes. But the
Legislature refused to ratify the compacts, leaving voters to choose
between three gaming initiatives on the Nov. 5 ballot. The uncertainty has persuaded Arizona Lottery officials to request bids for a study again, and the data should be gathered by fall, Lottery Executive Director Geoffrey Gonsher said. The complete study is expected by the end of the year. FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Action on Aging distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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