Growing Problem Gambling Awareness in Queens
Speaking as a long-time Queens resident I’d say there is a learning curve in our community’s understanding of problem gambling.
Part of the reason this curve exists is because many Queens residents (like me) became intimate with gambling while experiencing our first, highly sensationalized, Casino opening. Before that we had a well-known racetrack with its own train station stop and populated OTB’s on several of our Queens corners—but none of these ever received the type of publicity or made the same degree of social impact as the opening of the casino.
It wasn’t just because the casino was a casino either.
Public debate and controversy about the type of business definitely existed, but because this businesses’ opening was expected to translate to a thousand or more jobs for a community sharing its country’s economic depression and high unemployment rate, it was hard not to zoom focus on the economic incentives.
I can certainly recall various voices raising concerns about the potential social effects—but the sources of these concerns were vague and the scope of the concerns was broad, ranging from traffic jams to criminal activity to neighborhood economics and what population would be hired for employment. And it was, amid this publicity, excitement and list of socioeconomic concerns, that there was a quiet, unglamorous mentioning of problem gambling.
The topic was formally addressed. The casino provided pre and post-opening “Responsible Gambling” training for all of its staff. But the challenge of winning attention was understandable. Queens was gaining a significant business industry and trying to decide what we should think about it—and this mind was not inclined to put attention on vague, unfamiliar and slightly depressing “what ifs”.
My overgeneralized summation of that time was that most Queens’ residents’ understanding was similar to mine. I knew that gambling qualified as an addiction, but had no concrete sense of its practical power or activity. A little less than 5 years later I believe we still have a lot to learn and adapt to, but I also believe that the education of our experience has made us wiser, more knowledgeable and thereby better prepared to confront this problem in our community.
For help and/or more information on problem gambling click on our contact link: http://queenscfe.org/contact/