National Review: Video Poker, Flushed: Or, the rotting of a 'fruit machine'

These are bad days for the most highly developed members of Georgia's gambling community. By order of the state's highest court, video poker -- a.k.a. the "crack cocaine of gambling" -- is about to vanish like a mud puddle beneath the pitiless summer sun. Machines must be out of the state by month's end, forcing gamblers to find other outlets, such as the lottery, five-card stud (a game of true skill), various workplace pools, and placing bets on whether the weatherman is correct.

Georgia isn't the first place to have second thoughts about video poker. The machines that created a $1 billion-a-year industry in Jimmy Carter's home state had migrated across the border from South Carolina after being banned there two years ago. Some of these Bedouin machines are now heading for West Virginia, where they will work their magic on the populace in Rockefeller country, and also activate a built-in counter-constituency.

Indeed, wherever they turn up, video-poker machines incite stiff reaction, and not only from religious activists. Consumer types are now on the attack, and the trial-lawyer industry is testing the teats of this potential cash cow. "Georgia fought video poker like it was the bubonic plague," Tom Grey, head of the National Coalition Against Gambling Expansion, told me. "In South Dakota, the governor promised the largest tax increase in history if machines were outlawed, because that's what it would take to make up the lost revenue. Even with that threat, 48 percent of voters said, 'Tax us higher, just get those machines out of our state.'"

What is it about these machines that inspires such wrath? The chief complaint is that they are very good at fulfilling their primary mission: separating dopes from their money. There are few sights more pathetic than watching a poker drone feed dollars into one of these machines, which combine the promise of quick riches with the American capacity for staring at a tube for ten or so hours without blinking. And while many will reasonably agree that a dope should be allowed to throw his money in pretty much any direction he chooses, the problem -- from a public-policy standpoint -- is that the world is full of dopes, and that the video-poker industry has shown itself to be expert at placing at least one machine within a few blocks of each and every one of them. In South Carolina, video gaming exploded after a court ruled in 1991 that the machines were legal; by the time the campaign against them hit full stride later in the decade there were 30,000 of them in 6,500 locations.

While religious activists are at the core of the opposition, even secular strongholds such as the Netherlands are convinced that video slots (and regular slots) are just too good at their job. Last year, Holland ordered companies to rig the machines to accept a coin every 3.6 seconds instead of every 3.5 seconds. All told, 13 adjustments were ordered. Similarly, Dr. Mark Griffiths, a University of Nottingham researcher, has come to the conclusion that the "fruit machines" are designed to be addictive. "Event frequency is critical -- how many times you can gamble in a given time period," he told reporters. He adds that no stone is left unturned in the effort to hook suckers. "Researchers have shown that by spraying machines with certain smells, they can increase the take of the machines. Empirical research shows people gamble more under red lights than they do [under] blue lights." They also patronize machines that feature established brand names. Homer Simpson, he reports, is affixed to the most profitable slots in England.

The addiction angle is the opposition's club of choice, perhaps because it sounds better to modern ears than denouncing gambling as a sin. The antis gleefully supply empirical support for their charges. When South Dakota shut down the state's 8,000 video slot machines for three months, calls to gambling help lines fell 97 percent, according to a study published in the South Dakota Journal of Medicine. A wider indictment is found in a 1997 Connecticut Department of Revenue study, which discovered that 47 percent of gambling patrons were problem or pathological gamblers. The Institute for Problem Gambling says 30.4 percent of gambling revenues in seven states and provinces in the United States and Canada come from problem and pathological gamblers, and even the Harvard Medical School hikes a leg: Its study found that 1.6 percent of adults have what it calls a Level 3 gambling disorder, the highest level possible.

The poker barons, it should be added, also watch Oprah, and have attempted to counter addiction fears by pointing out that the machines not only produce jobs but create huge amounts of tax money that can be spent on The Children. In South Carolina, the industry not only argued that it had created 70,000 jobs but begged the legislature to increase taxes for the benefit of the tykes.

Despite all that, and the warning that whiskey and rock music would be the next targets, the industry fell before a vast coalition of liberals and conservatives, blacks and whites, who argued that some of those tykes were being left to roast alive in cars while their parents pumped their milk money into the poker machines. In addition, a lawsuit alleging that video gambling represented unfair trade practices and a RICO racketeering violation was victorious in district court.

In South Carolina, and across the nation, there is also a growing suspicion that gambling may have gotten a bit out of hand. Robert Goodman, author of The Luck Business, reports that as late as 1988 casino gambling was illegal in every state except for Nevada and New Jersey. Six years later, it was permitted in 23 states and under consideration in many others. Forty-seven states now allow one or more forms of legalized gambling, which has, to no surprise, become a powerful political force. Timothy O'Brien, author of Bad Bet, found that the industry put at least $4.5 million into national campaigns between 1992 and 1996, making gambling "a political force at the federal level on a par with the National Rifle Association and the United Automobile Workers."

This has drawn the glare of Ralph Nader and his apostles. "There's a huge cost to communities, there's a huge cost to individuals, particularly to families of compulsive gamblers," according to Scott Harshbarger, president of Common Cause and a supporter of anti-gambling lawsuits. Even the Canadians are sweating. Early in May, a Superior Court justice authorized a Quebec lawyer to initiate a class-action suit against Loto-Quebec on behalf of people who say they developed gambling addictions from using video lottery machines. That suit, according to reports, involves 125,000 residents, and in the end could bring over $625 million in damages. The news has brought dorsal fins to full erection down at Trial Lawyer Central.

Gambling has an honored place in American history. The Jamestown Company raised funds through a lottery, as did George Washington's Continental Army. But the spirit of restraint is clearly in play. "We've seen a lot of good happen this year," says Tom Grey. "While New York allowed gambling expansion, 22 states have said no to expansion since 9/11. We still have big challenges ahead, such as Internet gambling, where with a click of the mouse someone could lose their house without ever leaving home. But people are starting to recognize that gambling is not a victimless revenue stream."

These are bad days for Georgia's video drones, but there's little chance that the gambling impulse will be stymied, or at least not for long. For as it is written, wherever three of four people gather at least two will be willing to make a bet on something, including how long it will take the bystanders to organize against them.