Nevada weighs help for problem gamblers

Frankie Suarez knows that had things worked out differently, she'd be comfortably retired now and finally taking those European vacations her husband, Tony, had promised her. Instead, she's still working in her late 60s, dishing out food at a hospital cafeteria and relying on those meager wages plus Social Security to pay her rent.

Tony Suarez shot himself to death in 1999, leaving behind a wrenching note apologizing for the disaster he'd made of their finances and their lives. His demise wasn't altogether a surprise; Mrs. Suarez watched helplessly as he took two years to squander their once considerable savings at the blackjack table of a nearby casino since they moved here in the mid-1990s from Baltimore.

"He had no control over it, I know that," she says quietly from the modest 600-square-foot apartment they moved into after the bank repossessed the 2,200-square-foot home they built in 1996. "I just wish we [had] understood the problem sooner. It all happened so fast. He had a problem and we did not know what to do. Neither of us wanted to admit what was happening."

The dark side of gambling - the urge to risk all again and again - has led to untold numbers of cases like that of the Suarez family. Such addiction is a nationwide problem, as much a part of gambling as bright lights and ivory dice. But it is particularly severe here in Nevada, and it is starting to draw attention from local leaders.

This year, in a move welcomed not just by gambling-addiction advocates but also by the casino industry itself, the governor has proposed $100,000 a year in his next two-year budget for treatment programs. Some state legislators plan to increase that figure to at least $1 million a year. And earlier this month, the state officially acknowledged the annual National Problem Gambling Awareness Week for the first time.

"I think we've just acclimated ourselves and grown accustomed to the problem but now we're realizing how it negatively impacts not only the image of gambling but other lives as well," says State Sen. Dennis Nolan, a Las Vegas Republican whose current bill would put $2 million into gambling-addiction treatment and prevention over the coming two years. "While Nevada has been the innovator of the gambling industry, this is one area [where] we've fallen behind."

If the legislature puts up any money for treatment, it will be the first time the Silver State has specifically earmarked anything for this problem despite a 74-year history of legalized gambling. Seventeen other states have already done so, led by Indiana spending $3.5 million and Illinois, Connecticut, Iowa, Louisiana, and Oregon each spending roughly $2 million a year. New Jersey, which is most similar to Vegas with its Atlantic City boardwalk, spends $700,000 a year. Such efforts are aimed at a daunting challenge.

A Nevada-funded study revealed in 2002 that 6.4 percent of the state's population were either pathological or problem gamblers. That's far ahead of the 2.7 percent of the national population found to have such addictions in a 1998 survey conducted by National Gambling Impact Study Commission, a panel appointed by Congress. While no comprehensive state-by-state statistics are available, similar studies in other states have shown rates of 2.1 percent in North Dakota and 4.9 percent in Mississippi, according to the National Council on Problem Gambling.

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