Speakers at the two-day national meeting also highlight the problems that casinos can bring to nearby communities.

01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, September 18, 2004

By SCOTT MAYEROWITZ
Journal Staff Writer

WARWICK -- Video-slot machines -- like those at Lincoln Park and Newport Grand -- are the "most addicting form of gambling known to man," according to a local psychologist.

Robert Breen, director of the Rhode Island Gambling Treatment Program, told a group of national gambling opponents yesterday that the machines are "not your grandfather's slot machine" but "a 21st century computerized predator."

The machines allow gamblers to place a new bet every three seconds, he said, providing "no time to pause, no time to think."

Breen said gamblers who become addicted to betting on sports or greyhound and horse racing usually show signs of addiction about five years after they start gambling. For poker, blackjack and other card players that period is about 3 1/2 years.

But for the faster-paced video-slot machines, he said, the addiction period is about a year, the shortest of any type of gambling.

Breen was one of the presenters yesterday at the 11th annual conference of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling.. The group chose Rhode Island for the gathering because it would have coincided with the anticipated heated debate over Harrah's Entertainment's plans to build a casino in West Warwick.

However, this year's casino drive died last month when the state Supreme Court advised that the casino legislation approved by the General Assembly was unconstitutional.

About 70 people from across the country came to Warwick for the conference. Although the casino debate here has quieted, Guy C. Clark, chairman of the coalition, said his group aims to raise awareness in "battleground states" such as Rhode Island.

Other topics at the two-day gathering, which continues today, include voter initiatives, tribal gambling, federal legislation and the "continuing struggle" over a casino in Rhode Island.

John W. Welte, a senior research scientist for the Research Institute on Addictions, at the State University of New York, Buffalo, said that "people are more likely to be problem gamblers if they live close to gambling facilities."

Citing a 1999 national telephone study, Welte said that adults living within 50 miles of a casino had twice the probability of being problem gamblers as those who did not live within 50 miles.

The forum opened with Governor Carcieri, who was praised for his efforts to fight Harrah's Rhode Island plans. Many conventioneers said they wished their governors would fight proposals to expand gambling.

Repeating many of the arguments he made during this year's casino fight, the Republican governor said that "casinos create wastelands around them."

"The idea that they create economic development is absurd," Carcieri said. "A casino is really nothing more than a big vacuum cleaner."

Taylor Branch, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and convention panelist, said, "It's a fantasy to hear such good sense to come out of the mouth of a governor."

States that are dependent on gambling, Carcieri said, "seem to be having bigger financial problems, not less."

Pointing toward Connecticut, which has two of the largest casinos in the world, Carcieri said, "last time I looked, they had bigger financial problems than we do."

In the last decade, lottery tickets and video-slot machines were the fastest-growing sources of revenue for Rhode Island. Ten years ago, the lottery generated $90 million. This year that number is estimated to be $318 million. (About $250.7 million comes from the video-slot machines and the rest from traditional and scratch lottery tickets.)

The lottery has now surpassed businesses taxes to become the state's third-largest local source of cash, accounting for 11.3 percent of the state's non-federal revenue. Personal income and sales tax are the state's top two revenue streams.

Carcieri yesterday said he wants to slow the growth of gambling here and would like to see the state become less dependent on gambling. He hopes to do that by lowering government spending and improving economic growth.

Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian, who joined Carcieri for the convention opening, said that his city "would have felt all the negative impacts of a casino, while other communities would have pocketed all the money."

"Simply put," Avedisian said, "it is bad public policy to encourage people to lose money, encourage personal debt and to see families broken apart."