Today Gambling Statistics

Thirty-seven of our fifty states now offer lotteries. Fifteen million people show some sign of an addiction to gambling, and it’s no wonder with the gambling industry that have grown tenfold since 1975. Two-thirds of the adult population placed a bet of some kind last year alone and the profits from gambling in casinos are more than $30 billion. Lotteries come in second with about 17 billion every year. The “players” with household incomes under $10,000 bet almost three times as much on lotteries compared to those with incomes over $50,000. According to the American Psychological Association the Internet could be as addictive as alcohol, drugs, and gambling. Today, on Indian reservations there is almost 260 casinos in business. Even the Internet sets claim to 110 gambling sites that are related to sports. Once casinos opened in Atlantic City, the amount of crimes within a thirty-miles of the casinos increased 100 percent. The reported suicide rate for pathological gamblers is twenty times higher than for non-gamblers which translates to one in five will attempt suicide. Sixty-five percent of pathological gamblers, in attempt to support their habit of gambling, will commit a crime. The average debt incurred by a male pathological gambler in the U.S. is between $55,000 and $90,000 Our young people are gambling too and it has increased to: 42 percent of 14-year-olds, 49 percent of 15-year-olds, 63 percent of 16-year-olds, 76 percent of 18-year-olds.