Opinion: Take a critical look at future of gambling in Connecticut

This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which led to an explosion of Indian and commercial casinos across the country.

In 1988 only two states allowed casinos, Nevada and New Jersey. Today 39 states have casinos, and we now have nearly 1,000 of them, almost evenly divided between Indian and commercial casinos.

Nowhere did casino gambling get off to a more spectacular start than in Connecticut. Foxwoods, owned by the Mashantucket Pequots, opened in 1992 and Mohegan Sun, owned by the Mohegans, opened in 1996. They were the first casinos in the Northeast outside Atlantic City and quickly grew into the two largest casinos in the world – drawing over half their combined customers from outside Connecticut, creating 20,000 casino jobs, and sending hundreds of millions of dollars a year in shared slot revenue to the state.

The casinos also have a serious downside, however. They have created a pervasive gambling culture in southeastern Connecticut; they’ve skewed the region’s economy heavily toward low-paying service jobs; and they were followed by a sharp spike in the number of state residents seeking treatment for gambling addiction. According to a 2009 state-sponsored study, there had been a 400 percent increase in arrests for embezzlement since Foxwoods opened, a rate of increase 10 times the national average. The numbers prompted a columnist for the New London Day to describe southeastern Connecticut as the embezzlement capital of America.