Statement of Professor John Warren Kindt, Univ. Ill., to the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, 'U.S. and International Concerns over the Socio-Economic Costs of Legalized Gambling: Greater than the Illegal Drug Problem?'

摘要

Knowing that legalized gambling has a zero-sum economic effect (except for increased socioeconomiccosts) in its market, gambling proponents focus public attention on the wrong market--that is the local market instead of the strategic/regional market. Only in the most unusualhypothetical would the strategic regional benefits gained from legalized gambling outweigh thesocio-economic costs. Like legalizing cocaine, the socio-economic costs of legalizing gamblingoverwhelm the benefits. Via the meta-language model, the McDougall/Lasswell methodology ofpolicy-oriented jurisprudence confirms this conclusion and the analysis.