Compulsive Gambling Among Asians a Silent Problem

(image: GamblingAddictionForum.com)

Along the road to the American dream, casinos lure immigrant workers with the hopes of sudden riches. But what may begin as a fun harmless recreational activity, doctors warn, can morph into a destructive gambling addiction.

Dr. Timothy W. Fong, director and co-founder of the gambling program at the University of California, estimates that 2 million US adults meet the criteria for pathological gambling today.  Another 4 to 8 million may be considered problem gamblers, or those who experience problems due to their gambling behavior.

“The individual is considered a problem gambler when his behavior has brought non-catastrophic harm to his life, such as financial loss, but is still able to function.  It’s similar to substance abuse.  However, a fraction of those develop pathological gambling, which is a brain disease,” explained Dr. Fong.

Dr. Fong was speaking at a seminar called “Beating the Odds: Addressing Problem Gambling,” organized last month by the Institute of Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Dr. Fong stressed that Asian and Pacific Islanders are at higher risk of developing addictive gambling than other ethnic communities.  In the Boston area, gambling is a popular entertainment choice for Chinese workers, who hop on buses bound for casino resorts in Connecticut.

“In the Asian community, gambling is a rite of passage. Boys turn to men when they start visiting casinos. It’s just something parents expect them to do,” said Dr. Fong. 

“Many of us can gamble compulsively, [but] not everyone is a compulsive gambler,” Dr. Fong made clear, adding that there are social gamblers, for whom losing is part of the game.

Tram Tran of the Boston Police Department (BPD) also spoke at the seminar.  A BPD Vietnamese community liaison for 15 years, she recalled the BPD getting a call one day from a high school regarding a straight-A student who was skipping classes.

“When I paid [the student] a home visit, the student told me that her parents argue all the time, she couldn’t study anymore,” Tran said. 

Further into her investigation, Tran discovered that the student’s mother was an addicted gambler. Because the girl’s father couldn’t convince his wife to quit gambling, he resorted to drinking.

Problem gambling among Asians is so serious that the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling hired its first Asian community outreach coordinator, Chien-Chi Huang, two years ago.

Speaking at the seminar, Huang, a citizen of Taiwan, said that most Asian workers don’t think of gambling as a health problem, but as a moral issue or simply something that’s just part of daily life.  Therefore, they don’t want to talk about it.

In the past two years, the council’s help line (800-426 1234) received only 70 calls, from friends or family members of those perceived to be problem gamblers. 

“The sense of guilt and shame makes it very difficult for us to help. Another problem is the lack of hard data about gambling, but we have anecdotal evidence showing it’s a problem spread not only within the Chinese community, but also in Cambodians and Vietnamese populations,” said Huang, who was recently promoted to program manager at the 25-year-old gambling council.

According to the last Census, 15,000 Vietnamese immigrants live in the Dorchester area of Boston, but Tran of the  BPD estimates the number could be as high as 20,000.  Many of them are working-class families.

“All we do is counseling. We ask our clients if they want to talk about their problems, to see a counselor, or need debt management services. Sometimes we detect family issues, like domestic or child abuse,” said Huang.Speaking on condition of anonymity, a local Asian reporter said restaurant workers’ free-time activities are largely dictated by their immigration status in the country.  Because some of them are undocumented, they consider casino trips their only safe entertainment option, he said.Tran said the Vietnamese community has spread to East Boston and the suburbs of Randolph and Weymouth – but that gambling has led to criminal activities mostly in Boston’s Dorchester area.“I noticed that one corner store [in Dorchester] registered a lot of early-morning and late-night robberies,” she said. Tran interviewed a man who said he was repeatedly robbed at the same spot, but he couldn’t report the crime because he didn’t speak English very well.

“He said he got robbed on his way out of the bus [coming] back from a casino trip, late at night,” Tran recalled.The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 85 percent of adults have gambled at least once in their lives, 60 percent of them in the past year.  Some form of legalized gambling is available in 48 states plus the District of Columbia. The two states without legalized gambling are Hawaii and Utah.

In his years of studying problem gamblers, Dr. Fong noticed that the average debt accumulated by addictive gamblers is $65,000. The social consequences of compulsive behavior can include bankruptcy, divorce, child neglect, incarceration and even suicide.

The toll on gamblers’ health is also clear.  Because gamblers undergo higher rates of stress, they develop memory problems and are more likely than non-problem gamblers to have heart disease and stroke.“People aren’t using a drug that alters their behavior, they’re having a behavior that alters their lives,” concluded Dr. Fong.

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