Casino, racino initiatives would exact staggering costs

A too commonly used method of making money is to market a product in such a way that neither the manufacturer nor the consumer pays the full cost for the product at the time of the initial transaction. If the product is a basic need commodity (such as electric power) or includes an addictive component (such as nicotine) the interaction can be perpetuated in a dependent manner that makes change very difficult, if not impossible, and be even more profitable.

Even when the additional “costs” of the product which were not paid in the initial transaction (such as the cleaning up of fouled air or the years of productive life lost to illness or premature death) are recognized, the now-wealthy profiteers seldom face the task of accounting for their consequences in full. Legislative or legal remedies, such as the tobacco settlement, are too little too late. Similarly, when we recognize such additional costs in advance, and seek to modify them by imposing a special tax, a cleanup or disposal fee, we are too often short of the full cost and ability to ensure that our environment is not sullied by the product’s refuse.

These basic lessons from economics and recent history should be remembered as Maine voters consider the casino and racino referendum questions on the ballot. This is an addictive product with a tremendous hidden cost that will be paid at some point in time, by all of us to some degree, and in a very inequitable manner. It is not a cost which can readily be ameliorated by hiring more policemen, building a better intersection, buying prescription drugs for a segment of the population, putting more dollars into a city, state or school budget, funding a scholarship or two, or any of the other heroin-like injections to the Maine economy that are promised from these projects.

No matter how high the tax or “disposal fee” on a new refrigerator, one will continue to find such debris while walking in the woods. As wonderful as the tobacco settlement money has been, it has not brought back a single father or mother who left their family behind prematurely due to cancer or heart disease. Despite the legislative creation of the Superfund, the children who died from leukemia or brain tumors from unsuspecting toxic exposures will not mature to rear families of their own, or care and comfort their aging parents. These gambling initiatives will give create more such tragedies under the guise of recreation or choice, justified by meager promises of lower property taxes and token assistance to needy segments of the population.

Yet it is the very nature of addictive behaviors such as compulsive gambling to deprive individuals of the ability to choose. Recent national studies have shown that proximity to casinos is directly associated with an increased local incidence of compulsive or problematic gambling.

But the impact of the actions of these addicted victims of the gambling industry is not limited to their own lives or fortunes. Consider carefully the full social and economic costs of the current gambling proposals, and ask yourself, Who will pay for the re-education of the children who come to believe that money comes into the house when you’re lucky rather than when you have worked hard to provide a meaningful product of service? Who will pay for the housing and medical needs or restore the self-esteem of a lonely senior citizen who has just put their entire Social Security check into the exercise of pulling a slot-machine lever? Who will support the newly impoverished children whose parents divorce over a gambling addition? Or just teach and nurture those left at home to fend for themselves while one or another parent satisfies their lust for the gambling “high”?

Who will supplant the misconception in the minds of our young people who work at such an establishment that it must be OK to stack the odds so heavily, so overwhelmingly, in your favor to deprive the foolish (or addicted) of their hard-earned money, in order to increase your own wealth? What will we yet pay in corruption, deceit or outright atrocity, to correct the precept that you can assuage your guilt for so doing by putting a portion of the lucre toward socially noble causes? We might as well try to exonerate the Nazi gas chambers of their stench with a donation of the melted-down gold fillings to the Red Cross.

On the political front, the impact of these legislative licenses to enrich the Las Vegas promoters will create a very powerful, well-funded and single-minded lobby that will have the potential to disenfranchise the people who live and work here. It would be hard to imagine the developers of these projects failing to provide an open pocketbook to any candidate willing to continue or enhance their ability to profit from these licenses to loot the state. Even in states where such entities are barred from political contributions, other methods have been used to direct the political process, and such prohibitions are not included in either provision before Maine voters.

The strength of this state is its people – the hard-working, honest-to-the-core, loyal-to-their-neighbor folk who have solved the challenge of living together in a sometimes harsh, but wonderfully beautiful and resource-rich state. They are the kind of people we want our children to grow up to be, and the life we want for them is one of opportunity, productivity, and fulfillment through meeting life’s challenges.

If Maine is to be “the way life should be” for us, our children and our grandchildren, we ought not to be “poisoning the well” now for a few quick bucks and a cheap thrill. The slot-machine initiative and the casino question will ultimately require so much in human and social costs that neither you nor I, nor the proponents and enriched sponsors (who will most likely be long gone when the full bill is due), could ever fully compensate the victims, who will be our friends, our co-workers, our children and ourselves.

Lewis A. Hassell, M.D. lives in Winterport.