Setting Win Limitations

[Frank Kneeland]

I watched the video again... and again... and again. And here is what I take away from it:

1. Winning at gambling has the same response in the brain as giving more cocaine to a cocaine addict. "Coke and gambling in the brain do the same thing in the brain."

2. The Doctor reports that a normal brain when winning at gambling "looks" like a brain that is high on cocaine.

I have no problem with those two comments because if that's what the research shows then that's what the research shows. But then he puts on the big spin, or twist, to make a political statement:

3. "When you are taking tax money from gambling, think about that normal brain that looks like it's high on cocaine."

My problem with point #3 is that a normal brain might look like it's high on cocaine, but does that mean the results, actions, mental health of the individual, social consequences of the two, will be the same?

Then the Doctor throws in another emotional issue which really has nothing to do with gambling. In his final statement he says:

4. "Please think seriously about if we should also legalize certain drugs..." and then he mentions meth and cocaine "if we should go forward with this gambling initiative."

Well, hold on here. The debate at the time was about gambling and not legalizing drugs. What he did in his appearance before this panel was to take a highly charged issue about legalizing drugs and put it on the same level as expanding gambling. Frankly, I take the Doctor's comments as being all political using references to science to tug at the emotional fear of drugs being legalized.

There is another time this technique was used. It was about legalizing abortion. And the argument was that if abortion is legalized the next step would be for society to stop giving medicines to elderly people who are ill.

I'd just like to agree with you. Even though the research does show how certain drugs effect the brain are similar to how gambling effects the brain, the activities are not the same or equal. For starters ingesting a drug is more obviously bad to the person doing it. For second most street drugs come with impurities that are as bad if not worse than the drug itself. This gives gamblers the ability to always get the pure stuff as I don't believe it is possible to "cut" gambling with additives.

There are tons more differences that I'm sure are all applicable. That having been said, the similarities are no less disturbing for me.

It is worth noting that the study compared cocaine addicts on cocaine with gambling addicts on gambling. Other studies that used a random sampling of test subjects did not get similar levels of correlation.

Neither cocaine or gambling effect non-addicts ubiquitously.

~FK