Politicians cannot continue to fill their pockets with gambling money while turning a blind eye to the misery that gambling can cause. Congress cannot ignore the facts about the influence of gambling on our young people. The national conscience has been raised in recent weeks about the vulnerability of our youth and the influence of violence in our society. The report will tell us that 5.4 million Americans are pathological or problem gamblers, half of whom are youth gamblers. It also says over 15 million Americans are considered at-risk gamblers, meaning they have high potential of becoming problem gamblers.
Addiction is a real problem.
Gambling's adverse effect on over 20 million Americans is something that must be taken seriously. And with over 2 million young people considered pathological gamblers, they have a lot of years left to live in misery and to know despair. With the Supreme Court this week striking down a ban on casino gambling advertising, we could see the floodgates opened to tv commercials tempting those who already face gambling problems to roll the dice. Congress must seize the opportunity presented by the commission's report to take a hard look at gambling and the influence that campaign money buys and enact meaningful campaign finance reform that will ban all soft-money contributions. If political leaders in both parties do not exercise the good judgment to control the obscene amounts of money being poured into the political system, some think and I agree that you could see people become even more disenfranchised with a political process that has been corrupted.