I returned from working overseas for the past 6 years to find a strange phenomena in tiny Ottawa County, Oklahoma"--i.e. near the four states area of Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. I found 14 casinos in one litte county!
Ten of these casinos are run by 8 Indian tribes. http://www.indianz.com/IndianGaming/2007/002790.asp
These tribes include the Quapaw, Shawnee, and the Wyandotte. Newer ones have been opening up over the past year, and the state of Kansas is planning to run a state-owned casino across the border.
Can we call this development ? (Let alone, try and call it a good or great development in a time of high joblessness and an overall unhealthy U.S. economy?)
AMERICA'S NEED TO MONITOR THIS PHENOMENON
Here is just one website that monitors the rising phenomena of gambling in the U.S., especially in heretofor virgin or formerly gambling-free territories. http://casinowatch.org/quick_overview/quick_overview.html
According to one of the analysts quoted by this CASINO WATCH website, the rise of gambling addictions is currently one of the biggest mental health problems in the world. Moreover, gambling already affects anywhere from 2 to 5% of the population in the USA alone. http://www.ksproblemgambling.org/
GAMBLING WATCH GLOBAL is another site that observes with alarm the rise of gambling fever world wide-- http://www.gamblingwatchglobal.com/ --even as housing and economic issues continue unabated in many lands, especially here in the USA.
There are currently already several major research libraries at universities around the country studying this phenomena and how it adversely affects health and economies in the short and long term. http://gaming.unlv.edu/reading/published_diss.html
Various articles deal specifically with problems that native tribesmen in the USA are facing as the number of casinos on reservations rises,and rises: http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=LW5dwl0TvmshRWQh3hhn9rLJD3q2GKrRzGn8CHCJnQy4Bhgkvhpv!-887735472?docId=5002458511
The author, Maria Napoli, writing in the Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare states unequivocally that gambling is apparently bad, but turns around and argues the opposite. Pardon me, I have to ask: Who pays for such research and such findings?
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