Allow me to respond

HEY FRANK,

Somebody on your staff wrote a letter to the editor under your name complaining about one of my columns and sent it to CityLife ("Gambling addiction no laughing matter," April 24). You may or may not remember the letter -- that's assuming it crossed your desk for approval. As a well-connected Washington D.C. lobbyist for a powerful special interest, you probably just took a quick gander, briefly acknowledged it, then didn't give it a second thought.

That's almost what I did when I saw it, too. Contrived concern, perversely selective use of statistics, disingenuous omissions, vacuous hyperbole -- I think both of us can agree that if you've read one letter to the editor from an industry lobbying group, you've pretty much read them all.

But since the letter was slamming me and, more importantly, the contention in my column that problem and pathological gamblers account for a significantly under-estimated and largely ignored portion of gambling revenue in Southern Nevada, I figured the grown-up thing to do would be to give your letter a more careful read.

And I must admit I am very pleasantly surprised. I would have never suspected that your casino industry clients are so eager to nurture and even promote a discussion about how important problem and pathological gambling is to the bottom line! Far be it for me to let that dialogue die, so let's take a look at your concerns.

You wrote: "According to research commissioned by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission and conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, pathological gamblers generate an extremely small percentage of casino revenue."

What a blast from the past. I admit I've given very little thought to that gambling impact study since it was published toward the end of the last century. And I confess I was guiltily unaware that it contained estimates of how much revenue casinos make from people with gambling disorders. Boy is my face red!

I noticed, however, that while you refer to an "extremely small percentage," you neglected to give the actual number. No biggie -- I looked it up. As it happens, the NORC/University of Chicago research that underlies so much of the gambling impact study, and to which you have helpfully drawn my attention, estimates that "about 15 percent of the dollars lost gambling are lost by problem and pathological gamblers."

That is nothing if not a testament to the magnificent vitality of the industry that you, Frank, are so very proud to represent in Washington. Few businesses would call 15 percent of their revenue a small amount. And it's hard to think of any that would call it, as you do, "extremely small."

In your letter, you also wrote that "Approximately 1 percent of the adult population suffers from pathological gambling." I have no doubt that's true, if that's a national percentage as estimated by one of the many studies your industry has graciously financed over the years.

Alas, call me parochial, a rube, a hick if you will, but I wasn't writing about pathological gambling nationwide. I was writing about Nevada. And according to the 2001 report commissioned by the Legislature and prepared by Gemini Research, "pathological" gambling (the category you single out in your letter) in Nevada was estimated at 3.5 percent of the population. There are roughly 2.5 million people in Nevada, and 3.5 percent of them equals 87,500 souls -- if they were a county, they'd be the state's third largest.

"Problem" gambling was estimated at another 2.9 percent of the population in the Nevada study. The prevalence rate of pathological and problem gamblers combined equals the 6.4 percent figure that I referenced in my column, and if 6.4 percent of Nevada's population was in one place at one time, they would displace North Las Vegas as the state's fourth largest city. Just fyi.

As for much of the rest of your letter -- my column's "utter fallacy," "we don't want problem gamblers in our casinos, period," "Jackson's ... outrageous commentary" -- I'll just treat that as boilerplate bombast based on the same regard for honesty and sincerity that underscores the main points you tried to sloppily pass off as an argument. Which is to say no hard feelings, Frank, m'kay?

And hey, don't be a stranger. Specifically, when you, on behalf of the industry you so ably represent in the corridors and elegant salons of Washington D.C., call for mandates on health insurers to cover the costs of problem and pathological gambling treatment, be sure to let me know.

Drop me a line when your corporate clients dedicate a percentage -- shall we say, oh, 15 percent? -- of their total TV advertising budget to running public service announcements about the dangers of gambling disorders. But don't bother unless the ads actually use words like "pathological" and "disorder" and "treatable" and air in heavy rotation in markets where the companies rely on local gamblers. (Fluffy puffy ads like the ones you bought on the Travel Channel don't count; in fact, Frank, by suggesting that gambling disorders are as easy to overcome as merely setting a budget, I wonder if they might be doing more harm than good.)

And when casino companies declare that they are eager to share information with state regulators so everyone can really find out how much of the industry's revenue is generated by problem and pathological gamblers, by all means, send me that press release.

Oh, one last thing. I couldn't help but detect a rather pretentious and, oh let's be frank, Frank, morally superior tone in your letter, especially when you contrast you and your industry's noble motives to my merely "provocative" behavior. You start your letter saying, "I failed to find any semblance of humor in Hugh Jackson's recent article making light of pathological gambling," and later reiterate, "Perhaps Jackson finds a funny side of this important issue. We do not."

On this score, at least, you may have a point, as the American Gaming Association's approach to "this important issue" is indisputably very different from mine. I was indeed hoping to focus attention on a persistent problem that doesn't get the public policy consideration it deserves by, as you put it, "making light" of it. You and your industry, by contrast, are making money from it.

Keep in touch,

Hugh

Hugh Jackson is a longtime local journalist, former senior editor of CityLife and the proprietor of the Las Vegas Gleaner (www.lasvegasgleaner.com), where he blogs.