I'm from South Dakota. South Dakotans suffer more gambling losses per capita and lose a higher percent of their income than the people from any other state. The electronic video poker machine is an addictive gambling machine and the addiction is intense. South Dakota has taken the normal video poker machine to a new level by adding touch screens, lightening fast play, no meaningful limits and setting the machines so the average user loses 36 percent of the cash they put in. They are in your face with one machine for every 62 adults in the state.
Accessibility is the toughest thing for a pathological gambler to deal with.
The state encouraged an inexperienced population to use these gambling machines, declaring them entertainment. Financial ruin, crime, destroyed families and suicides are not fun for the future. Studies of four centers show that the need for gambling addiction treatment almost completely stopped when the video lottery system was shut down for 100 days in 1994. If you want to learn more about addiction to the crack cocaine of gambling, I urge you to research what happened in all of the treatment centers in South Dakota. South Dakota video lottery is owned, operated and controlled by the state.