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Broken Promise on Gambling Suicides

Chief coroner pledged to track cases in 2004.

By Tom Barrett, 16 Apr 2007, TheTyee.ca

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More than two years after B.C.'s chief coroner promised to start tracking gambling-related suicides, the Coroners Service still can't say how many people in this province are killing themselves because of gambling problems.

Back in November, 2004, Chief Coroner Terry Smith said his office would soon begin keeping statistics on suicides related to gambling.

There had been some dramatic gambling-related suicides in the news. The media and the New Democratic Party had been asking why, unlike most other provinces, B.C. did not track such cases.

At first, Smith defended his office's policy of not collecting such information, saying that it was too hard to come up with meaningful statistics.

Then, in November 2004, Smith announced a change in policy. The Coroners Service hoped to begin tracking gambling-related suicides by April 1, 2005, Smith told the Victoria Times-Colonist.

"One of the factors that B.C. coroners will consider when investigating suicides in the future will be whether the deceased had a gambling problem and what role that played in the death," the Times-Colonist reported.

Two years after that self-imposed deadline, the Coroners Service still has no information on gambling-related suicides.

'They don't want to know'

"We don't classify our suicides like that," Coroners Service spokeswoman Terry Foster told The Tyee last week.

She said she didn't know why the service doesn't track gambling-related suicides.

"It could be in development," she said.

Gambling opponents say it's no secret why B.C. still hasn't come up with a way to track suicides related to gambling.

"They don't want to know," said Sol Boxenbaum, a Montreal counsellor and critic of the gambling industry.

Boxenbaum, co-founder of Viva Consulting, which helps problem gamblers, said all Canadian governments have a gambling problem.

"Wherever you go, the government in power is addicted to the quick fix with the revenue," he said. "And they don't care about the consequences."

Issue flagged decade ago

While it is impossible to get precise numbers on gambling-related suicides, many experts believe that it is a serious problem across Canada.

The Canada Safety Council cites a 1996 report to the federal government that found that "suicide attempts among pathological gamblers are much more frequent than among the general population."

As well, the report concluded, "suicide attempts are more common with pathological gambling than with any other addiction."

The Safety Council estimates that 200 Canadian compulsive gamblers kill themselves every year.

"For every suicide, five gamblers with self-inflicted injuries could end up in hospital," the council says.

Studies also link gambling addiction to bankruptcy, family breakup, domestic abuse, assault, fraud, theft and homelessness, the Safety Council says.

Coroner: 'Total autonomy'

Gambling critics argue that, by expanding gambling and profiting from its revenues, governments must share some of the guilt for these tragedies.

And they note that in B.C., the solicitor-general's ministry, which is responsible for both promoting and regulating gambling, is also in charge of the Coroners Service.

In the past, Chief Coroner Smith has strongly denied any political influence in the collection of data on gambling-related suicides.

"I have total autonomy to collect this data as I and my staff see fit," Smith told the Vancouver Sun in 2004, at the same time that he was pledging to collect information on gambling and suicides. "The sol-gen would not interfere. I've never discussed it with the sol-gen."

Recent BC suicides

In recent years, there have been a few well-publicized gambling-related suicides in B.C.

In September, 2002, Shyh-Shiang Tung murdered his wife, doused their East Vancouver home in gasoline and set it on fire before committing suicide.

His two children and their grandparents escaped before the house exploded. A coroner's inquiry concluded that Tung was in financial trouble because of his losses at the Gateway Casino in Burnaby.

A little over a year later, Dorothy Dilling, a housekeeper at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, snuck into the Village Green Casino in Vernon, even though she had placed herself on a list of persons voluntarily excluded from casinos in B.C.

Dilling proceeded to lose $2,000 on slot machines, then checked into a room in the hotel adjacent to the casino. There she hanged herself in the shower.

In September, 2004, Dilling's husband, Stan, got drunk and rigged a bomb from a propane tank and a torch. He thought briefly about driving the bomb into a Kamloops casino, then changed his mind and dismantled it.

He ended up in court anyway, where he said he had hoped that if he threatened to blow up a casino, the police would shoot him and end his misery. He was banned for a year from going near B.C. casinos, their employees or offices of the B.C. Lottery Corp.

It's difficult to say how many more cases like Tung and Dilling exist because there are no comprehensive national statistics on suicide and gambling.

National stats vary

In 2003, the Canadian Press surveyed coroners across the country and reported that 10 per cent of all suicide victims in Alberta had been linked to gambling, while in Nova Scotia, the figure was 6.3 per cent.

The rate for Quebec, however, was much lower: 2.6 per cent.

After that story ran, chief medical examiners from across Canada agreed at a national conference to try to track suicides in which gambling appeared to be a factor.

The next year, the National Post calculated that there was an average of 85 gambling-related suicides a year across the country -- not counting B.C., which did not collect any data, and Prince Edward Island, which did not return the Post's calls.

The Post calculated that provincial rates for gambling suicides varied widely, from one per cent of all suicides in Ontario to 10 per cent of all suicides in Alberta.

Other factors?

Since then, the national picture has become even murkier. Nova Scotia quietly stopped collecting data in the summer of 2004. The province's chief medical examiner said the old numbers were not reliable, but NDP critic Jerry Pye suggested that the province didn't want inconvenient facts to conflict with gambling revenues.

"Here's the government offering a source of entertainment, and a source of entertainment where some people are committing suicide as a result," Pye said. "If someone committed suicide on a ferris wheel, I can assure you the minister of labour would be there trying to find a way to prevent it."

There are a number of problems with making sense out of these national numbers. For one thing, people often have more than one reason for committing suicide.

They may be depressed, they may have medical problems, they may have suffered a broken relationship. If gambling is one of a number of contributing factors, how much weight should it be given?

As well, each province collects its figures differently.

When Nova Scotia collected data, for example, coroners specifically asked the family of suicide victims whether the deceased had a gambling problem. That would explain why Nova Scotia's rate was higher than a province like Quebec, for example, where a suicide is recorded as being gambling-related only if a family member volunteers the information or if gambling is mentioned in a suicide note.

'No easy task'

Many experts believe the numbers that do exist underestimate the problem.

Boxenbaum, the Montreal counsellor, said that he knows of gambling-related suicides that were not recorded as such because either no one mentioned gambling or the next-of-kin lied about the deceased's gambling problem.

Douglas College criminologist Colin Campbell, who has written widely on gambling, acknowledges that "identifying gambling as a cause of suicide is no easy task."

Still, he said, B.C. should try to meet the challenge.

"In points east of British Columbia there have been some fairly sensational suicides," Campbell said. "People in the parking lot of a casino blowing their brains out."

However, he said, there is little hard evidence beyond such dramatic anecdotes to back up critics' claims that gambling is the main cause in a great number of suicides.

Coming up with a reliable way of tracking such suicides, as the chief coroner promised in 2004, would help answer that question, Campbell said.

Related Tyee stories:

[Tyee]

Tom Barrett is a contributing editor of The Tyee.

24 Comments:

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  • snert

    5 years ago

    Historically

    Any statistics would only be meaningful if they included historical data on the problem. As long as I can remember people have been killing themselves over gambling debts or worse still being killed by someone else. This went on way before the liberalised gaming atmosphere we have now.

    It's a problem that's been around a long long time. Statistics won't fix it nor will closing the casinos.

  • avandoc

    5 years ago

    I'm glad the Tyee is

    I'm glad the Tyee is bringing up this indelicate subject. Gambling, including lotteries, is a dishonest and regressive way for governments to raise revenue. It is a voluntary tax, which some may think is just dandy, but it has large hidden costs. These include the monetary costs of managing the personal and medical fallout of compulsive gambling, and the costs to individuals and communities of disrupted lives. And as with many vices, its costs are largely born by people who are already struggling.

    So of course governments want to keep this all quiet. But the job of the press is to keep making noise about issues like this.

  • dolphin

    5 years ago

    GST

    I agree with avondoc that using gambling (or "gaming" as governments euphemistically like to put it) as a revenue generator is a regressive way to tax, since the poor tend to spend proportionately more of their income on gambling than those better off. The article didn't even mention the gambling related fraud often committed by individuals in positions of trust (we had a school secretary and a bank employee jailed for embezzling money to finance their gambling habits in our town). Personally, I never gamble and get rather annoyed when I'm stuck behind someone in the 7-11 lineup doing their lengthy lotto shopping. As far as I'm concerned, lottery ticket buyers are just paying another tax--the GST (gullible suckers tax).

  • clo3

    5 years ago

    Too bad it's so much fun!

    It’s too bad that there are so many problems with gambling because it can be pretty fun when done within one’s means. But you’re absolutely right Dolphin, it is mostly the poor who gamble, not those who can afford it. It is questionable that the government promotes gambling like it does, and it is despicable that they turn a blind eye to the social consequences of it. Of course, as Snert pointed out, collecting stats is only the first step. Without addressing the root problems of gambling addictions, stats will do us no good.

  • Chris H

    5 years ago

    It's attitudes like snerts ...

    snert: "Statistics won't fix it nor will closing the casinos."

    Perhaps, if there weren't any casinos, my wife's cousin wouldn't have lost thousands of dollars at a casino and jumped off the Lion's Gate all on the same night. Casinos make gambling very easy for the gambling addict. Their procedures for identifying and helping people with this issue is pathetic. The industry would rather take their money then save a life. The government takes all that gambling revenue in, but directs a pitiful amount into gambling addiction. If Campbell doesn't care then he should simply say that. The casinos have implicitly shown they don't.

  • thomas49

    5 years ago

    too many people counting money...

    and IGNORING THE CONSEQUENCES...

    as usual,simple minds making MONEY off the backs of others ...instead of getting real jobs...

    then again HUMAN BEINGS ARE THE BIGGEST PARASITES ON THIS PLANET!!!!!!!!!!!

  • snert

    5 years ago

    Chris H

    I don't think you comprehend the depth of the problem. It has been going on for a long time, even before casinos. History is rife with tales of woe. What the solution is I don't know but keeping statistics is not really part of it. If they don't know the percentages of people who get addicted to gambling by now, they never will. That's my point. Closing casinos, not needed.

  • Chris H

    5 years ago

    Please tell me ...

    Please tell me that you don't have a job that tries to figure anything out, snert. Please tell me that you are an assembly-line style worker, cutting the proverbial hole out of a piece of metal all day long.

    In order to solve problems, and indeed determine what actions are required, you need good information. How many deaths due to gambling addiction occurred before the rush to expand gambling in our province? How many deaths now? Has there been an increase? The anecdotal evidence suggets there has been. What programs have been effective in helping addicts keep away from these buildings? By not asking these important questions, you are effectively making policy that it doesn't matter. Stick your head in the sand and throw your hands up? Yup, sounds like a plan to me, snert.

  • gkam

    5 years ago

    free choice

    What's all the uproar? Don't these internet casino owners have the right to earn money? Are you anti-capitalist?

    God obviously made those gambling victims to serve as suckers for his Plan for Capitalism, where social Darwinism serves to separate the righteous (and rich), from those made for the pickin' (like the rest of us).

    And where's the guy who calls himself Captialism? Why isn't he defending the internet crooks, in the name of profit?

  • Grumpy

    5 years ago

    Now, here's the real story

    Campbell's casino's as are all Canadian casino's, are strictly a money laundering scheme converting 'dirty' drug money, into 'clean' money. The government just skims from the top. Those addicted to gambling are just collateral damage in the multi billion industry. That's why everything is so secret.

    Just look at Ontario's lotto's, corrupt and the tainted odor of corruption is coming our way!

    We will never hear the truth because the 'real' economy is poor and the government needs it's take on the very 'dirty' drugs game!

    Simple as that.

  • ov

    5 years ago

    CBC radio

    Forget the name of the program but I know it was CBC radio one because it is the only station that I listen to. The program said that for every dollar the government brings in as revenue from gambling there are two dollars in social costs.

    I can't see how we are making money when expenses are twice what revenue is. But then different people reaping than getting raped. And the social darwinists think the best solution is to simply not pay the social cost, and think that suicide is a solution. Yup, sooner we get rid of all those useless eaters the better off the real people will be.

    Explains why gambling used to be illegal, prior to the neo-Dickens period. Now it is not only legal but promoted by some of the best PR flaks in the business. A lot of the lottery sales are due to the perception that it is the only way out, and the you never know and can't win if you don't play jingoism takes on an authority of truth. Repeat a lie often enough, you know how it works.

  • realisticman

    5 years ago

    There's a Sucker Born Every Minute

    The origin of that phrase is unclear but the dictum isn't. Investing in any form is a gamble, casinos and lotteries are 'get rich quick' schemes for many suckers. There will always be gambling, whether you throw your money into a restaurant or a piece of land to grow crops, it's a gamble. The moral question is whether or not the state should be encouraging gambling by advertising it and making instant gambling as accessible as it presently is. It's interesting to note that the citizens of Monaco are not allowed to gamble in their own casino - they know it's for suckers.

  • snert

    5 years ago

    Chris H

    Please tell me you're not a bureaucrat or worse still a manager of bureaucrats. When the statistics are already available the last thing needed is more of them. Is BC unique in the world of gambling addiction, not.

    Your reaction to my comments indicate that you are a real person of action. Let's get busy and study the problem to death.

    Nobody's sticking their head in the sand. I know there is a problem.

    Less talk more action. The casinos don't need to be closed.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    Excelletnt point R/man

    Quote:
    It's interesting to note that the citizens of Monaco are not allowed to gamble in their own casino - they know it's for suckers.

    I see it as just another consequence of Christianity - bent in its way to serve the interests of capitalism - through the fundamental faith in miracles.

    Or the kind of thing that Orwell pointed out in Nineteen Eighty-Four; without the lottery....continued existence would be hopeless.

    Remember this passage:
    They were talking about the Lottery. Winston looked back when he had gone thirty metres. They were still arguing, with vivid, passionate faces. The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the running of the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being non-existent persons. In the absence of any real inter-communication between one part of Oceania and another, this was not difficult to arrange.

    Remind you of anything?

  • Chris H

    5 years ago

    snert

    Did you read the article? The problem is the statistics are not readily available. How do you know that the expansion of casinos has not contributed to an increase in suicides? The provincial government cares so little about the problem that they don't even bother to try and find out.
    I don't think we want to make policy in this province because "snert says so."

    snert: "What the solution is I don't know but keeping statistics is not really part of it."

    Yogi Berra: "You don't know what you don't know."

    You seem so determined that casinos aren't a problem it looks like no matter what the facts are, you've made your mind up. Given your opinion, why try and provide responsible gambling programs at casinos? Then again, it's only people's lives we are talking about, right? That's far less important then the almighty dollar.

  • rockyvoids

    5 years ago

    Beautiful

    Haw! Haw! Right on!
    Chritianity/Capitalism. Shall we add Optimism? The fundamental faith in miracles, or "How I successfuly pushed a camel through the eye of a needle and got to Heaven."
    Love your postings GW.

  • dolphin

    5 years ago

    The Secret

    I'm wondering why followers of "The Secret" haven't driven casinos into bankruptcy with their special powers.

  • snert

    5 years ago

    Chris H

    I read the article and I'm saying that enough is known about the problem already to work on solutions.

    Try thinking proactive instead of reactive. Something might actually get done.

  • Chris H

    5 years ago

    snert

    Too bad you can't give any solutions. With all your "knowledge" on the subject you readily accept that you don't know how to proceed. Who knows, there might be a casino out there doing something that has actually helped people break their gambling addiction. We'll never know in BC, however, because we are too scared to actually gather the information. When people fight hard, like yourself, to actually stay ignorant because they are afraid of the results, you have to question their sincerity in solving the problem.

    The simpliest solution would be to just make gambling illegal. Cut of the source. Addicts would then have to find illegal means to lose all their money. That would be much more difficult for them then simply walking into any casino and betting away the rent money as they can today. Very proactive. Stop the problem before it begins. A reactive solution would be to try and help those addicts that have already "hit bottom" and lost the family home.

    I for one, don't believe we need to stop all gambling activities. There are probably some good, effective ideas out there. Maybe they are already in place at some casinos. You'll never know, however, if you don't try and find out. Trends change, society changes ... you don't stop looking at what is happening. The Church had everything it needed to "know" that the earth revolved around the sun. No need to investigate any further, eh?

    Oh well, keep plunking along on the assembly-line snert.

  • Chris H

    5 years ago

    er

    I mean the sun revolved the earth. LOL!

  • snert

    5 years ago

    Chris H

    The assembly line seems to impart more wisdom than whatever you do. The information has already been gathered to solve the problem.

    Once again you appear to have no concept of the scope of gambling addiction. It's only too obvious by your persistence in the belief that it is a relatively new problem. It has been going on for many more years than casinos have been in existence in BC. The solutions are already available. We just have to opt to use them. Carry on with your life with blinders on. Hopefully you won't get blind sided by something.

    Just like Virginia Tech the signs are there and readily readable. We just have to learn to act in time. Enjoy church.

  • ov

    5 years ago

    Empiricists Demand Data

    Until there is data there will continue to be casinos scattered around the city. The solution is to make them illegal. True, it won't totally eliminate gambling but at least it will remove the government sanction and reduce it.

  • snert

    5 years ago

    Google

    Punch in "gambling addiction" (with quotation marks) and you get 1,060,000 hits. Almost at the top is the following.

    Canada Safety Council

    There is no strong indication that more statistics must be gathered to resolve the issue. In fact there is indication that some questions may just never be answered.

  • whamcam

    5 years ago

    How will this information be used?

    Lots of people gamble - some get addicted and kill themselves.

    Lots of people drink booze, some get addicted and ruin thier lives. Some drink themselves to death.

    Lots of people smoke and it kills them allitle more every day.

    Suicide is an ugly consequence when some people get addicted to gambling. It is a consequence of addiction wich is not limited to gambling alone. Addiction sucks- deal with addiction instead of blaming gambling.

    I dont give a rats bloddy arse how many people kill themselves from gambling addictions - they get grouped in with ALL the addicts running around. Nothing makes them special becuase they lost all thier money on a table instead of in a buisness deal.

    addiction is bad, gambling is not the only thing that causes it.

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