Gambler counseling plan OK’d

AUGUSTA – The Maine Gambling Control Board agreed Wednesday to join with the state Office of Substance Abuse for the delivery of counseling services to compulsive gamblers.

The counseling services, which aren’t yet available, are mandated by LD 1829, the state’s slots law. The services will be funded with a portion of the 3 percent of net revenue from Hollywood Slots at Bangor earmarked for the gambling board’s administrative costs.

No set amount has been determined. A one-year memorandum of understanding between the board and the state, however, caps funding for the treatment at $500,000.

For state gambling regulators, determining exactly what level of services will be needed has been hindered by a lack of hard data about the problem.

“The problem is no one can tell us how many people [will be in need of counseling],” Robert Welch, gambling board executive director, said Wednesday during a board meeting in Augusta. He added, however, that “nobody’s expecting a big first-year rush.”

According to Hollywood Slots officials, six people so far have placed themselves on the racino’s self-exclusion list, which bars them from playing for a year. Self-exclusion can’t be rescinded by the person, the racino or the state.

While many forms of gambling are not new to Maine, the state’s track record with slot machines goes back less than nine months, when Hollywood Slots opened the first, and so far only, racino in the state. At this early stage, it is not yet clear what the social implications of legalized slots will be.

To date, Welch said, there has been little interest among counselors to address the problem. Of 65 organizations tapped for training, only four submitted the paperwork leading to certification. Problem gamblers would be treated as outpatients from private offices.

In a presentation a year ago for gambling control board members, OSA Director Kim Johnson said that while the state lacks hard data, some 2,000 Mainers, or less than 1 percent of the state’s population, considered themselves problem gamblers in 1998, when asked to complete a survey on the prevalence of substance abuse.

In theory, she said, 10 percent of those afflicted with a gambling addiction will seek help for their problem.

Though the Maine Gambling Addiction Network, or MEGAN, is being funded with slots revenue, the services will be available to people addicted to other varieties of gambling, including bingo, the state lottery, scratch tickets, pari-mutuel wagering and poker, to name a few.

The startup process began earlier this year, when a small group of counselors received training leading to certification in the treatment of gambling addiction.

Under the agreement authorized by the gambling control board, the OSA will oversee training for counselors. Day One Prevention and Juvenile Treatment Network, a Portland-based agency with which OSA has a similar arrangement for unrelated programming, will handle billing, reimbursements and other day-to-day considerations.

In recent correspondence with the OSA, Day One Manager Pamela Kane Marshall agreed it was hard to predict how many Mainers will seek counseling for compulsive gambling, but that she, too, expects a slow startup.

Based on the agency’s experience with other forms of counseling, she projected that 100 people could be sent to MEGAN in the first year and of those, about half would be referred to counselors for treatment.

“I have no idea if that will be accurate, but it is a place to start,” Marshall wrote. “I assume we can make adjustments as we go along if we are surprised and find we are swamped with folks needing treatment.”

As it stands, the state’s gambling control unit and liquor and lottery commission, as well as Hollywood Slots, encourage problem gamblers to call a toll-free telephone hot line, which in turn refers them to one of three Gambling Anonymous chapters in Maine. They meet weekly and are located in Lewiston, Portland and Augusta.

Though Hollywood Slots currently is the only venue in Maine offering slots, a GA chapter has yet to be established in Bangor.

From January through October of last year, the help line received 337 calls from Maine, Welch said during a board meeting in January. He noted that those calls predated last November’s opening of Hollywood Slots at Bangor and, as such, were related to other kinds of gambling. A more current total was not immediately available Wednesday.

For the sake of consistency, all of the parties are promoting the same number, (800) 522-4700, which rings into the National Council on Problem Gambling.