Lawmakers Seek Gambling Study : Congress: Bipartisan group wants a commission to review societal effects of legal wagering. Industry opposes move.

By ROBERT L. JACKSON

Sept. 30, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON — A group of lawmakers pressed their campaign Friday to establish a national commission to study the impact of gambling, saying that the evidence emerging since legal gambling’s spread across the nation is cause for alarm.

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), backing House legislation to establish the research effort, said it is becoming apparent that “people in the lowest economic group have the greatest predisposition” to gamble and they suffer the most from the wide availability of lotteries, casinos and other forms of gambling.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), sponsoring a similar Senate bill, said that communities which approve gambling initiatives for “a quick budgetary fix” are starting to realize that there are damaging side effects.

Legal gambling has proliferated to the point where lotteries exist in 37 states and casinos operate in 23 states. Only two states, Hawaii and Utah, presently forbid wagering.

The bipartisan group of congressional advocates for a study commission so dominated a crowded hearing by the House Judiciary Committee that some opponents charged Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) with staging a “rigged” session. Hyde hotly retorted that there was “no disposition” favoring the bill but he and most committee members seemed inclined to support it.

Opponents--mainly legislators from Nevada and New Jersey, two states that pioneered legal gambling--said that Congress should keep hands off the issue because states’ rights are involved and the mood on Capitol Hill is to give more leeway to the states.

“Why has gaming proliferated across the country?” asked Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who opposes the bill. “Because the states themselves--the governments closest to the wishes of the people--have chosen to allow gaming within their borders.”

However, Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), chief sponsor of the House measure, said that growing evidence of gambling’s harmful side effects includes addiction by persons who can least afford it, an increase in teen-age gambling and the breakup of families.

He cited press reports of a 19-year-old Iowa youth who committed suicide after running up huge gambling debts and of a 41-year-old salesman who shot himself in the parking lot of an Illinois casino after losing more than $50,000.

Referring to the proliferation of lobbyists for the gambling industry, Wolf said: “I am concerned that the flood of casino money into the states will drown out the voices of ordinary citizens and overwhelm state public officials.”

Hyde added that in state legislative battles, “those who support gambling have vast amounts of money to spend on lobbying whereas the opponents usually do not.”

Discussing the addictive nature of wagering, Paul R. Ashe, president of the National Council on Problem Gambling, said that the American Psychiatric Assn. and the American Medical Assn. both have officially recognized a disorder known as “pathological gambling.”

“The essential features of the disorder are a continuous or periodic loss of control over gambling . . . and a continuation of the behavior despite adverse consequences.”

Bill Jahoda, a former bookmaker for 14 years for organized crime interests in Chicago, appeared before the committee voluntarily to say that “the livelihood [of gambling] depends on making suckers out of us and our families.”

Testifying behind a screen to avoid cameras, Jahoda added that “organized gambling--whether licensed or illegal--manufactures nothing except smoke, false promises and hard dollars at the expense of the unwary.”

Rep. Barbara F. Vucanovich (R-Nev.), said that “the real agenda . . . is a complete federal prohibition of gambling.” But advocates said that the legislation is not an attempt to ban or regulate gambling, only to study its impact.

Lugar, who is among candidates seeking the Republican nomination for President, said that the commission would seek to learn how gambling affects low-income families, how it affects crime rates and to what extent teen-agers gamble.