The Rhetoric of Pathological Gambling, Research Paper Example

One issue commands my attention, spurs my interest to pursue a deeper understanding of my choice of topic: the under reliance of Macau’s economy on its gambling industry. The rapid growth of this industry, evident in high rate of male and female participated to bet, has boosted the problem of pathological gambling. Based on seeking self-satisfaction, avoiding the face of difficulties and the way casinos attracted people to gamble such early wins, it generates a widespread problem with major implications for society and the individual. Although the gaming industry truly brings a huge economic benefit like the current situation in Macau, it achieves low unemployment rates and high revenues for imposing tax from casinos, it unfortunately created the expense of social value and further made a shortsighted and largely materialistic culture. In addition to witnessing my uncle’s failure because of betting and to studying a real case of how the effective treatments help people to overcome the problem of gambling, they have little by little led me to consider the essentiality of psychological treatments and regulations. Consequently, the strong pain to society and the affected individuals has been formed by people who have become pathological gamblers; thus, to build up the betterment to our society, the effective treatments and regulations to reduce negative impacts are needed in a reality.

The first appeal of logos and ethos has emerged when Problem Gambling Services (PGS), which focuses on studying the behavior of gamblers, argued that women have a larger passion in gaming industry than men nowadays. In very early 1920s, men had been reported of gambling much earlier than women, which began in early 1930s; on average, men reported problem gambling durations of approximately 10 years as compared to a lower average of 4.5 years for the women (Toneatto& Wang). However, with the more rapid progression towards problem gambling, women are more often reported. The research was given by PGS, “there are 81.8% among women who significantly like to play some games based on the problem of gambling, such as slots, bingo, and lotteries as non-strategic game; in contrast, mostly there are 61.4% of men preferred to play the games in strategic, skill-based types of problem gambling” (Toneatto& Wang). Because PGS worked and updated the data giving us a logical argument and credible resource, it obviously tells us that the amount of people in gambling has been increasing constantly as well as gaming industry has become common among most women, no matter what kind of the games people play. Since being one of the most popular industries in the world, I need to have a better and in-depth understanding why people are attracted to gambling and why a person become a pathological gambler.

In the face of satisfactions and difficulties in life, it has been raising the problem of pathological gambling today. As the author Per Binde of Gambling Motivation observed, people developed a comprehensive motivational model for leisure gambling in order to fulfill a good self-satisfaction, as Per concluded five points of why people gamble that are respectively the dream of hitting the jackpot, social rewards, intellectual challenge, the mood change induced and the chance of winning (“Gambling Motivation” 59). In addition to people’s satisfactions, the motivation to gamble likewise appears when people face difficulties. For example, financial difficulties, relationships with others, negative emotions, evaluation and decision-making, work or legal difficulties (“A Review of the Empirical Literature” 4) has led people to relax by some ways and certainly, gambling is one of the options to pursue relaxation. Through Mr. Matthew J. Rockloff researched to identify the factors purposed to cause problem gambling behavior, he could designate to Four Es (4Es), respectively, they are “Escape, which means to avoid social interaction; Esteem, which means to avoid negative self-appraisal; Excess, which means to fail to resist impulse; and Excitement, which means action sought to relieve boredom” (“The Four Es of Problem” 104).Unfortunately, these 4Es, in response to threats to people’s feelings of self-worth or social acceptance, has eventually made or magnified negative impacts of becoming a pathological gambler. Then we can see, with the purpose of earning profit, challenging their abilities and escaping the hard time in life, admittedly established motivations to gamblers who searched satisfaction and avoided difficulties.

Not only the self-difficulties and self-satisfactions motivate people to gamble, but also the early big wins in casinos has further been pursing people to continuously gamble, or even become a pathological gambler. In the Experience of Gambling and its Role in Problem Gambling, one of the writers Turner did a creditable research as the appeal of ethos by showing that having “an early big win is correlated with problematic gambling and that the median amounts that gamblers considered a big win was $1,000” (“Experience of Gambling” 237-266). Often the big win occurred the very first time the gambler gambled seriously. Interestingly, gamblers who had an early big win often did not leave that first gambling session with the money they had won as Turner did not show a correlation between whether problem gamblers won, lost, or broke even on their first gambling experience (“Experience of Gambling” 237-266). The gamblers who have a big win in their first gambling experience and continue to gamble have increased levels of gambling involvement in that they have many more spins than gamblers who did not experience a big win. This suggests that it is not only the big win in and of itself that correlates with problematic gambling but rather the behavioral conditioning associated with the increased number of spins may partly explain why players who have an early big win, and continue to gamble in the session in which they have the big win, later intentionally developing gambling problems. Hence, in order to feel satisfaction in society, avoid facing difficulties and challenge a big win, people’s involvement to gamble has been building a well-developed gaming industry, including Macau, where names the East-Asian Las Vegas.

From top of that, the steady gaming development carries benefits on economy as lowering the unemployment rate and bringing a very awful amount of net income. In the case of Macau where I lived the most in my lifetime, with the rapid growth in opening of several casino resorts underway, it is reported that many sectors, especially the construction sector, experience a shortage of labor. The government even responds by importing labor from neighboring regions, such as Mainland China, Hong Kong, the Philippines and India. Another appeal of ethos, by the data from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) of Macau SAR Government indicated,

“Total labor force was 346,600 in August-October 2011 and the labor force participation rate reached a historical high of 73.0%, with total employment increasing by 2,900 over the previous period to 338,200. Analyzed by industry, employment of the Gaming Sector and the Hotel Sector registered increase. Number of the unemployed decreased by 600 from the previous period to 8,300, with 16.4% being fresh force entrants searching for their first job, down by 0.2 percentage point over the previous period” (DSEC).

It obviously gives people in Macau a better quality in standard of living as well as the government becomes much richer since imposing tax from each casino. According to the data worked by the city’s Finance Service Bureau, Macau’s gaming tax revenue bounded 62.3 percent in January of 2011 over last year and its amount of income has contributed for 85.9 percent of Macau’s total receipts in January, through imposing 35 percent of casino’s gross revenues (“gaming tax income”). Certainly, both of credible resources offered by different organizations of Macau SAR government express the advantages of developed gaming to economy; however, negative impacts are inevitably generated to our society as well.

The expense of society has been created in order to earn an economic benefit from the gaming industry, as the appeal of logos. “The estimated social cost to families and communities form bankruptcy, divorce, job loss, health care costs and criminal justice cost associated with problem gambling was $6.7 billion last year (2005)”, as the National Council on Problem Gambling reported (“Education”). Unwittingly, the betting took our properties away beyond the games, including the expense of society to the youth. Surprisingly, the percentage of youth who are pathological and problem gamblers is higher than adults. More than a third of 4,000 ninth through twelfth grade students had gambled for money before their eleventh birthday (“Wanna Bet?”); also, the survey concluded the winning often makes kids feel good among fellows as same as the view I have pointed out that self-satisfaction purses people to bet. In addition, gambling caused a social problem that impacted on the well being of family. In “A Good Bet”, Carole Caplin revealed how her father’s alleged addiction to betting destroyed her family. Even if running up debt of £150,000 that do not make for serendipity, but its debt has indeed stressed her life like she said that the debt had become “a part of modern life” (“a good bet”); then unintentionally, her papa was aloof from daughter Caplin. It is no doubt that the social impacts to youths and families have been rising from the past until today; thus, I cannot properly support to gamble, as the experience my uncle met in the past had brought me a huge pain as well.

Witnessing my uncle facing a family and financial failure because of becoming a pathological gambler, as an appeal of pathos; has built me a strong sense to consider whether the gaming industry should freely develop, or whether it better to set a legislation to reduce the negative impacts. By 2005, many of my uncle’s neighbors and I were so jealous of my uncle since possessing a completed family including his wife and two daughters and a small but popular Chinese food restaurant in his hometown. As my aunt once told me, “Thanks God to allow your uncle appear in my life.” Its words were so touch to me and then I once regarded my uncle as my future success like possessing a happy family and successful own business. Unfortunately, my uncle had broken all the happiness he possessed, as addicting to gamble in 2006. He spent a lot of insignificant time to study the poker games as Toneatto indicated that men prefer the games with strategic, and to blindly purse a big win. To him, his family and business had been ignored. Eventually, he was required to sell the restaurant in order to pay a debt he owed when gambled in casino; most sadly, his family sudden became strangers to him even though they had not left my uncle alone. His failure likewise made my family, especially my mother and I, to feel so upset after witnessing my uncle being reduced to nothing. Beyond building the pain in my heart, this experience raised the concern about the influences of pathological gambling, thereby considering the need of regulation in gaming industry to reduce negative effects to people.

Through seeing that pathological gambling made social impacts and the pain of emotion to people, more opponents’ voices and organizations stood out to be against of gambling that led a bit changes to casino. In 1994, the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling (NCALG) was founded as the increase of crime and social problem. NCALG and the American Gaming Association (AGA) then proposed a congressional legislation that aimed at establishing a blue-ribbon panel to study the impact of gambling on American society (“CQ-under attack”). With rising awareness of gambling’s dangers from panel; they won and scored 33 opponents and 2 supporters on the legislative proposals to legalize gaming at the state level (“CQ-under attack”). It successfully formed an obsolete to the developing gaming industry in 1990s. Though the casinos later proposed some training sessions as helping the problem gamblers, Arnold Wexler, a recovered compulsive gambler still criticized, “Some of them, I’m sure, are doing it because they want to look socially OK and show that they have a compulsive gambling policy” and another critique from Cyndi Collier, a state-certified counselor in compulsive gambling at Sierra Tucson Inc. also doubted gaming industry’s motives and then said “I would say that’s something that sounds pretty good on the surface but doesn’t carry any weight at all” (“CQ-under attack”).As a result, people against to gambling feel not enough to offer some training session only; more essentially, the approval of regulations to gaming industry and government’s support to anti-gaming industry are their true wants to reduce negative influences.

With the increasing availability of gambling throughout the world, there is interest in developing more effective treatments that support by government. For instance, in Canada, the government and industry are already doing a lot for help to pathological gamblers as investing 102 million dollars in responsible gaming awareness, education, treatment and research. They did a long list of enhancement over the past years includes to train of more than 6000 gaming staff through a program developed and delivered by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to install system alerts on OLG slot machines to flag a self-exclusion program participant who attempts to use a loyalty card for slot play, and so on (Rutsev, 2009). The government’s support is a driving force to people in developing more treatments. So later on, the Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Gamblers Anonymous (GA) as the significant and popular treatments were recognized. They are effective for the treatment of a variety of problems, including mood, anxiety, personality, and psychotic disorders. In the case study about a man of aged 29, who have spent over 24 hours in casino so that initially scored very high 18 out of 20 questions questionnaire of GA. His case was approached to take CBT over 20 sessions for gaining self-control over maladaptive behavior. After two months of therapy, the man practiced this self-hypnosis exercise and noticed a considerable improvement of the symptoms as the result of GA scored 6 better than before (a case study). After significant progress in improving self-control was observed in this case study, it proved the feasibility of the treatments and further strengthened our sense on the necessity of regulation to gaming industry.

In conclusion, to resist raising the social impacts and the pain to individual and family, treatments and regulations should be established for the betterment of society. It is no doubt that gaming provides a lot of fun and excitement to our life while people can make money for betting and creates great financial situation to government in the example of the East Asian of Las Vegas, Macau.