James Blocker / Philadelphia Inquirer
More gambling opportunities in Pennsylvania lead to more problem gamblers
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Scott LaMar
James Blocker / Philadelphia Inquirer
Airdate: Tuesday, May 2, 2023
Casinos in Pennsylvania generated $515 million in March – the first time more than half a billion dollars in revenue came in in one month. Commercials for sports betting sites are all over TV now. A survey conducted by the state found online gambling raises $1.2 billion in profits each year. That same survey found 11% of Pennsylvanians gambled online last year.
Legal gambling is widespread in Pennsylvania. But so is problem gambling as the number of people who are looking for help has increased dramatically.
With us on The Spark Tuesday was Josh Ercole, Executive Director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling, who said he thinks there is more problem gambling based on the number of calls to 1-800-GAMBLER hotline for problem gambling,”We’ve seen is a dramatic increase over the course of the past few years. Typically before the expansion and through COVID, we were averaging somewhere around 1100 calls for help a year, which is significant. However, over the past two years, in 2021 and 2020, two things escalated. Last year we received between chat, text and phone calls. We received around 3000 folks reaching out for help over the course of that 12 month period.”
Ercole was asked to list the signs that someone is a problem gambler,”This can be difficult and tricky to identify If somebody knows that somebody gambles. If they’re aware that a friend or a loved one is gambling and they start to see the individual maybe become preoccupied with gambling, starting to think about it and talk about it, have it become maybe, the forefront of conversation if they’re doing it more often. Again, that increased tolerance, if you see somebody who is now gambling multiple times a week or gambling alone or gambling with increased amounts of money. Certainly if somebody is asking for loans to pay off debt or anything like that, ultimately what we often say if somebody is putting other types of activity second to gambling, that’s typically not a healthy activity. There’s been research that’s shown that to enter into an at risk category, somebody who gambles five or more times in a 12-month period can be identified as at risk. Now, that does not mean that they’re going to develop a problem, not at all. But it’s that continued participation. You figure five times a year that could equate to once every couple of months. And if somebody is involved in an activity like that at that frequency, which obviously is not that often, but for some people, again, that might be just enough to to elicit those behaviors in that relationship with the activity could start to turn south at some point.”
If you need help or are looking for resources to get help for problem gambling, call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-426-2537.
