Gambling treatment backer urges more studies

WESTBROOK, Conn. (AP) - Connecticut is failing to do enough to understand the problem of excessive gambling, an advocate for gambling treatment said Thursday.

Marvin Steinberg, executive director of the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling, told more than 100 participants at a conference that state government is doing too few studies to determine if problem gambling is getting worse in Connecticut. He says studies were done every five years from 1981 until 1996 and one was last done in 2009.

State Consumer Protection Commissioner William M. Rubenstein, who attended the conference, said that although the state is not required to do another study until 2019, "it does not mean we are not going to do it."

Steinberg said the state provides too little money to help treat gambling problems. The state contributed $1.9 million to Problem Gambling Services in the most recent budget year, though the lottery generated $290 million in the same year.

Little is done to address the costs to society due to excessive gambling, he said.

"No one in the legislature has figured that out," Steinberg said.

The 2009 report said that as of 2007, Connecticut residents who had a probable pathological, or compulsive, gambling problem accounted for between 1.2 percent and 1.5 percent of the population, which was 2.7 million, or totaling 32,000 to 40,500 people.

An estimate of gambling losses was $13,586 per pathological gambler.