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Gambling Facts and Fictions
Gambling Industry Influences
 
Gambling Facts and Fictions: The Anti-Gambling Handbook to get yourself to stop gambling, quit gambling or never start gambling
Copyright © 2004
 by Stephen Katz
ISBN: 1418472409
Library of Congress: 2004094023
Gambling Industry Influences
Chapter 3

The gambling industry is out there constantly trying to promote and expand gambling. Their friends join in because they also benefit from gambling. They all use their influences in order to entice you and your children to gamble. Politicians who support gambling are influential. Media such as TV, radio, newspapers, books and magazines are influential. Sports leagues are influential. Hollywood movies and TV shows are influential. Advertising is influential. The internet is influential. There are other influences as well. All of these pro-gambling forces combined make for some very strong influences. How these pro-gambling forces try to influence you and your children is disclosed in other chapters. Being able to recognize and understand these influences will help you and your children to not be lured into gambling.

Pro-gambling politicians are some of the best friends of the gambling industry. These politicians are especially adept at promoting gambling. They constantly put devious fictional spins on their portrayal of gambling. They say that gambling creates jobs and constructs buildings. They say that tax revenue from gambling aids senior citizens and funds schools. They want people to feel good about voting to enact more gambling so that society can have all of these benefits. They want gamblers to feel good about the lost money going to good causes. These politicians know that the benefits and good causes are at the direct expense of harming and destroying the lives of millions of people. The main reason for the pro-gambling agenda of politicians is not for societal benefits or good causes, but to give themselves more power which enables them and their friends to become richer. The major beneficiaries being gambling industry owners.

Here are a few examples of gambling being promoted by friends of the gambling industry. Newspapers publish front page stories about lottery and casino super jackpot winners. Television programs show Las Vegas as glistening, glorious and glamorous. Popular entertainers insist that the way to be cool and hip is being at the casino. Radio sports show hosts talk about that "sure win" game tonight. The news media broadcasts that the big fast horse "can’t lose" in the derby. Advertisements imply that stock traders can be rolling in dough soon. Advertisements for lotteries say, "it pays to dream" and "you’ve got to play to win." There are many more promotions of gambling by friends of the gambling industry.

In the gambling industry a successful marketing scheme is promoting gambling as fun, recreation and entertainment. It could be debatable that gambling might be these three things in the short-run. But in the short-run if betting often or betting a lot and always in the long-run, it is not debatable that gambling is any of these three things. Gambling always eventually turns out not to be fun, recreation or entertainment.

For all gamblers, even small-time bettors, gambling at the very least correlates with feelings such as irritation, frustration and aggravation then can worsen to agony, depression, violence and suicide. Gamblers may not always admit experiencing these feelings. However, gamblers definitely do experience these feelings. Even small-time $1 a week lottery players get irritated, frustrated and aggravated when always losing. Rarely though do gamblers only bet $1 a week even if saying that. When gamblers who say they only ever bet $1 a week, see a super jackpot getting big and bet $5, $10, $20 or more on it, then they are not $1 a week gamblers any longer. Gambling always means losing money. Usually losing more money than intended. The bottom line is that losing money and feeling all of these negative emotions is not fun, recreational or entertaining.

It does not matter where living, you and your children are vulnerable to the influences of gambling. It does not matter if the nearest casino building, horse racetrack or any other gambling structure is located hundreds of miles from your home. The internet has made gambling instantly, addictively available. Gambling is rampantly prevalent on the internet. One of the first things that appears on many internet search engine websites is a banner, link or advertisement for an online casino or gambling of some type. Casino gambling is in your home right now on the internet. Stock market trading which can be just as deadly as casino gambling, is in your home right now on the internet. Sports betting, horse racing, card games, lotteries and an entire multitude of other types of gambling are in your home right now on the internet.

For those who do not have the internet in their home, you may believe that your children would be protected from internet gambling. That is incorrect. Gambling can be accessed on the internet in schools. Gambling can be accessed on the internet in the homes of your children’s friends. Gambling can be accessed on the internet in the homes of your relatives and neighbors. There are so many easy ways for your children to access these internet gambling websites.

Even without the internet, gambling is available in stores having lottery ticket self-dispenser machines that your children can access. Football and sports betting slips are available to children in almost all schools. These betting slips are sold by other children who are paid by unscrupulous adults. These unscrupulous adults give commissions to these children who sell the betting slips as an incentive to sell lots of them. Local illegal bookies are available in almost any town. Age does not matter to them as long as someone has money. These local illegal bookies will gladly take bets from school age children. Your children do have ready access to any number of gambling possibilities.

You may believe while children are growing up that there is a best case scenario to prevent them from gambling. You may believe that the best case scenario is that the children are raised in a nice home by loving, caring, non-gambling parents with an overall good moral background. Sometimes even this best case scenario is not good enough to prevent children from becoming gamblers. The influences of the gambling industry and their friends can be too strong for parents alone to prevent children from falling into the clutches of gambling. Parents cannot always effectively convince children about the negatives of gambling. Parents can use all the help they can get. Good help is right here in this book to back parents up. This book is like a thick, reinforced concrete wall backing parents up to keep gambling away from children.

A best case scenario for gamblers is to read and absorb the information of this book. Gamblers for many years have been cleverly duped by the influences of the gambling industry and their friends. One of their ploys is to say that "gambling in moderation is okay." They try to entice every moderate gambler into becoming someone who frequently bets a lot of money. This enticement many times succeeds for them. To be a so-called moderate gambler means occasionally and many times more than occasionally, foolishly losing hard-earned money.

Every so-called moderate gambler has a gambling problem. Suppose that you are considered to be a moderate gambler. A moderate gambler will occasionally lose for example $5 at a time. So the gambling industry basically "grabs" $5 at a time from you. You would remember this for a lifetime if a thief grabbed a $5 bill out of your hand and ran away with it. What about a gambling industry "thief" who grabs $5 each time from you for a super jackpot lottery drawing? The odds are that you will never hit a super jackpot even if living many thousands of lifetimes. How about grabbing $5 a race at the horse racetrack? How about grabbing $5 a hand at blackjack? How about grabbing $5 for a few slot machine pulls? How about grabbing $5 per stock trade? How about grabbing $5 from you at other gambling activities? That occasional $5 multiplied by countless occasional times, adds up to a lot of money over the months and years. Anyone who is grabbing your money like this is a problem that must be eliminated. But the gambling industry does not want you to think this way. The gambling industry wants you to think that each occasional $5 lost gambling is fun, recreational and entertaining. The gambling industry spends millions of dollars on advertising and public relations to keep their so-called moderate gambling customers foolish and ignorant about gambling. This book will clearly show that gambling in moderation is not okay. This book will wise you up to their propaganda. Readers of this book who smartly apply its information will choose to keep money in the bank or spend it wisely on truly pleasurable, meaningful things.

It does not matter how frequent of a gambler you are, it is never too late to reap the knowledge of this book. You have probably thought dozens of times about the need to end gambling. The time to do that is now. Your opportunity to quit is now. Gambling has or will affect your life, family and occupation in a negative way. With gambling you have lost, are about to lose or eventually will lose very important things. This book will help to eliminate the desire for gambling but you must allow it to. You have a choice. One choice is to use the knowledge and guidance of the book. Then when receiving your monthly bank account statement there will be a steady increase in the balance. The other choice is to succumb to the influences of the gambling industry by continuing to be their customer. Then when receiving your monthly bank account statement there will be a steady decrease in the balance or the balance will be zero. You want your money to be in your bank account. You do not want your money to be in the bank account of a gambling business owner. You do not want you or your children to be customers of the gambling industry.