Wednesday, Jun 29, 2005
A gambling epidemic hits Russia
Vladimir Radyuhin
Lax controls have helped the gambling industry grow to frightening proportions.
[NO TO GAMBLING: Participants at an anti-gambling rally in Moscow. - PHOTO: AP]
RUSSIA HAS been hit by a new epidemic — gambling. In the past few years the business has grown to such frightening proportions that it threatens the health and the purse of millions of Russians. Russians spend about $3.5 billion on gambling every year, according to estimates. In Moscow the number of gambling places has doubled in a single year, with the glittering signs of casinos and slot machine arcades shining on all the main streets and in remote residential areas. Doctors have registered hundreds of thousands of gambling addicts in the capital.
The boom began in 2002 when the licensing of gambling businesses was taken away from municipal authorities and transferred to the State Sports Committee. There is no federal law to regulate the industry. Anyone can get a licence by paying a token 1300 roubles (about $46) for a licence. The Sports Committee was disbanded last year, and no licences have been issued since then, but new gambling places continue to spring up.
Moscow has emerged as the world's second biggest gambling centre after Las Vegas. There are 58 casinos and 2,000 slot machine arcades in the Russian capital, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. Lax controls enable businessmen to open hundreds of gambling halls in violation of existing regulations which ban gambling venues and slot machines on sidewalks, in the metro, near schools, medical facilities and markets frequented by minors. Moscow has more than 60,000 slot machines. Other cities are fast catching up.
The gambling boom has led to a rise in crime. One slot machine brings its owner between $700 and $1,000 a month, making gambling as profitable as drug trafficking and attracting organised crime groups to the business. There is also widespread cheating, when slot machines are programmed to give few or no winning prizes at all. Armed attacks on gambling premises have become a major problem for police.
Medical authorities report a huge rise in gambling addiction as slot machines have put gambling within easy reach of everyone — from teenagers to pensioners. A recent poll showed that three-fourths of senior school children in Moscow have played a slot machine at least once in the past year, while one-fourth do it on a monthly basis. Organisers of an anti-gambling rally held in Moscow recently cited statistics showing that a third of all gamblers lose all their savings at the slot machines.
Since the beginning of the gambling boom the number of patients suffering from gambling addictions has increased manyfold in Moscow. People are running up huge debts, losing jobs and sometimes their apartments. According to the Health Ministry's Chief Psychiatrist Vladimir Voloshin, Moscow alone has about 300,000 gambling addicts.
The Moscow city legislature two weeks ago unanimously approved an appeal to Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov urging him to transfer licensing of the gambling industry back to local authorities and to push for a federal gambling law that should tighten control on the business. Earlier attempts to put legislative curbs on gambling have been blocked by industry lobbyists.
Copyright © 2005, The Hindu.