Transcript Vice, Disease, Responsibility: A Whirlwind History

Vice, Disease, Responsibility: A
Whirlwind History
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1892
Criminal Code enacted
 Gambling provisions contained in a
section titled “Offences against religion,
morals and public conveniences”.
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1900
Exemption for charities
 The first pivotal moment in Canadian
gambling history.
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1909-1910 The Miller Bill
Private Member’s Bill
 Sought to curtail the growing business
of betting on horse racing.
 Concern to eliminate gambling on and
off race tracks.
 Debated extensive in the House of
Commons and publicly before a Special
Committee.
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Miller Bill
M.P. & spokesperson for anti-gambling
coalition of Protestant Church groups
that comprised the Moral and Social
Reform Movement.
 The same folks that brought us:
Prohibition, Narcotic Laws,
Sabbatarianism and Eugenics
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Miller Bill
Bill amended, unintended result –
betting on race tracks became legal.
 Legal Monopoly for 70 years of the 20th
Century.
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World War One
Betting at track halted for duration of
war.
 1919 Royal Commission.
 Last hurrah for Moral Reform
Movement’s anti-gambling crusade.
 Race track betting reinstated.
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1925
Agricultural Fairs exempted
 Second pivotal moment in Canadian
gambling history.
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1930’s

Depression – a few calls for national
lottery or sweepstakes to relieve the
unemployed or to build hospitals.
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1950s
1954 Joint Committee of Senate &
House of Commons on Capital
Punishment, Corporal Punishment, and
Lotteries.
 Recommendation: No State Lotteries.
 Last genuine public consultations on
gambling in Canada.
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1969 & 1985
Governments authorized to conduct and
or license lotteries and lottery schemes.
 1985 – electronic games and the
consolidation of Provincial authority.
 Amendments enacted in the absence of
public consultation.
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Post 1995 Proliferation
Varying interpretations of Criminal Code
Provisions.
 Intent of federal Code was to be
national, consistent and uniform.
 Balkanization of regulatory and
operating regimes.
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Side Note:
Alberta quick to exploit the Code
exceptions charities and agricultural.
 Graft and Corruption evident in the
establishment of casinos here in
Edmonton in the late 1960s.
 Contrary, to public opinion B.C. does
not have the Canadian monopoly.
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Process of legalization
Represented a move away from a
conception of gambling as a “vice”
 Those who participated in gambling
were no longer subject to a moral
censure.
 Involvement of charity and government
regulation/operation destigmatizing
forces.
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Disease

Proliferation of gambling through 1970s
80’s and into the 1990s began to
provoke criticisms in Canada especially
with the advent of hard-core gambling
formats such as electronic gaming
machines.
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Researchers and Research
Taken more seriously. Prevalence
studies undertaken.
 Gambling behaviour specialists psychologists, psychiatrists, clinicians,
sociologists and researchers - move to
the centre stage of policy debates.
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Problem Gambling
And its negative impacts spur the call
for more research and treatment
services.
 1992/93 no provinces committed
resources to problem gambling.
 By 1997/98 all provinces had.
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Disease…
Gambling as a health issue “outed” - to
be taken seriously.
 Persons who gamble excessively are
generally seen as “sick” and in need of
treatment.
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Responsible Gambling

Has very recently emerged as a unifying
construct bringing governments, gaming
industries, problem gambling therapists
and the academic community together.
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Ontario, for example,
The Canadian Foundation on Problem
Gambling (0ntario) est. 1983.
 Re-engineered as the Responsible
Gambling Council (Ontario)
 A non-profit, NGO funded by Ontario
Ministry of Health.
 Mandate: public awareness, prevention,
education in regard to problem
gambling
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RGC advisory “partners”:
Ministry of health & long-term care
 Ontario Problem Gambling hotline
 Ontario Lottery & Gaming Corp.
 Centre for Addiction & Mental Health
 Ontario Problem Gambling Research
Centre.
 Ontario Horse Racing Industry Assoc.
 Ontario Gaming Secretariat
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Strategic Alliances:
Between what once were strange
bedfellows.
 Now work toward the common goals of
prevention, harm reduction, value
systems, and quality of life.
 Encouragement of “responsible
gambling behaviours”.
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Government officials and gaming
industry have new allies in the form of
treatment experts and researchers.
 Together the problematic aspects of
excessive gambling are redefined under
the rubric “responsible gambling”.
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Responsible Gambling

Entails a mixture of concerns focused
on individual gamblers regarding moral
fault, self-control, medical and social
causation and therapeutic intervention.
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Responsible gambling agenda

Neutralizes such issues as accessibility
of gaming, its expansion, its formats,
and the profit motives of government
and industry.
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Responsible Gambling paradigm
Transposes social problems affiliated
with excessive gambling into individual
problems and depoliticizes them.
 To twist the words of C.Wright Mills:
 Public Issues remain Private Problems
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Conclusion
Public has tolerated the transformation
of gambling’s status through the 20th
century.
 Public Support is provisional.
 Persistent treat: Corruption & Problem
Gambling.
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The Responsible Gambling
paradigm

Represents a set of “compromise
maneuvers” designed to facilitate and
sustain the legitimacy of gambling at the
start of the 21st Century.
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