Fatal attraction

>> Casino suicides: separating fact from urban myth

by JOHN EDMONDS

The old taxi-driver's face became somber, his voice mysterious, as he told his tale. "My friend was in the bathroom at the Montreal Casino when he saw a pool of blood coming from a stall," the cabbie says. "He went outside and told somebody, and they sealed the place off. Thirty minutes later, he went back in and there wasn't a trace. No blood, nothing--just business as usual. They used special materials in the casino bathrooms that don't stain with blood, because sometimes when people lose everything they have at the casino, they can't go home and face their family. So they kill themselves."

When asked if his friend would tell his story to the media, he clammed up. Casino parking attendants tell similar stories, all with similar circumstances: always grisly, always witnessed by someone else, always covered up fast as though nothing ever happened. For what it's worth, the Quebec coroner's office states categorically that there has never been a suicide on the grounds of any casino in Quebec. Urban legend meets reality.

But the cold, hard facts are grisly enough. Whatever the locale, the number of gambling-related suicides in the province has climbed from two in 1994 to 15 and counting in 1999, as was revealed by the Quebec coroner's office last week.

Leaving Las Vegas

Even so, the numbers should come as no surprise. According to a 1997 University of California study, Las Vegas has the highest suicide rate in the U.S., with about 500 annually--nearly 200 more than comparably-sized cities without legalized gambling. And Americans who visit Las Vegas are four times more likely to commit suicide than those who don't.

While Atlantic City, New Jersey has experienced fewer suicides, the percentage increase there has been significant. Before gambling was legalized in 1975, suicides hovered at 52 per year; after a dozen years of legalized gambling, suicides went up to 64, a rise of 23 per cent.

By contrast, Quebec's 15 gambling-related suicides account for only a small fraction of Quebec's 1,300 suicides per year (Quebec's suicide rate has long been the highest in Canada). But according to Coroner's spokesperson Francois Houle, "We only say that it is a gambling-related suicide if we have proof that a gambling problem is the main reason for the suicide," and that the number of gambling-linked suicides could be even higher than official statistics show.

Some of those who killed themselves did so after having played and lost at the Montreal Casino. But, says Houle, "Most of them talked about having problems with Video Lottery Terminals." Over 15,000 money-gobbling VLTs--all owned by Loto-Quebec--have sprouted like mushrooms throughout the province's barscape since they were legalized in 1993. They are lucrative for bar owners and the government, producing a jackpot of $444 million in net profit for Loto-Quebec in 1998-99. They are also notoriously addictive (critics have called them "the crack cocaine of gambling"), and well-documented stories linking them to compulsive gambling and suicide have been reported across the country for years.

Anti-gambling organizations and other citizens' groups have long recommended that the machines be restricted to casinos where problem gamblers can be voluntarily excluded, but Quebec City opted for a more permissive approach.

Taking over for the mafia

Loto-Quebec spokesperson Jean-Pierre Roi says that it "is not realistic" to assert that widespread access to the machines is a likely reason for the upswing in suicides. "The legal machines replaced an estimated 40,000 illegal machines throughout the province, according to the Surete du Quebec," says Roi. "That's almost three times as many machines. And many were rigged, and a lot of the money went to organized crime, not to the Quebec government."

But recovering gambling addicts like Larry (not his real name) say it's the government that's pulling the con job now. "When they wanted to legalize gambling in Quebec, they didn't talk about VLTs, but about opening a fancy European-style 'James Bond' casino which would bring in the tourists, and problem gamblers could be excluded so it would be safe," he says. "But if you look at the casino, there's actually not much table space, its mainly machines. And in every corner bar, more machines. And you'll notice that it's always the same people playing."

The numbers bear Larry out: of the $413 million in revenue collected by the Montreal Casino last year, only $31.6 million came from tourists outside Quebec.

As for Larry himself, "I don't go to bars any more because that's what seems to work," he says. "There were times [during my addiction] when I was driving down the highway looking for a wall to drive into."