About 20 elderly Asian Americans pile onto a gambling bus in front of an Asian market in Quincy, Massachusetts.
It’s a scene repeated three times daily in not only Quincy, but other South Shore towns as well, according to the Patriot Ledger.
The buses take gamblers up to Connecticut, but with the pending arrival of casinos to Massachusetts, there is increasing concern of gambling addiction in the Asian American community.
The Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut has a person dedicated to marketing to the Asian community. Cindy Liu says about 16 percent of its gamblers are Asian.
Social service agencies which treat for the addiction do not have any staff who speak any Asian languages.
Chien-Chi Huang was the manager of the Asian Community Program at the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling from 2006 to 2011. The program was cut.
Huang said she knew someone who lost both his business and marriage and had to work three jobs to pay off his gambling debts.
“It’s a serious social problem here. It’s really hard to adjust to a new country,” she said. “I remember I talked to a cook for a restaurant. He said gambling was the only thing he had to get social activity.”
You can read about efforts to learn more about the problem of gambling addiction in the Asian community and the possibility of restoring the program in the Patriot Ledger.
RE: Intense marketing targeting Asians American gamblers raises addiction concerns: Imagine your grandmother sitting in the back of a patrol car in handcuffs. I was that woman and the gambling addiction destroyed my heart and soul, and was the most humiliating moment of my life. Some people asked the question, “Why didn’t you just stop.” Compulsive gambling is cunning, baffling, and powerful and it’s difficult to understand the addiction because no chemicals or substances are ingested into the body.
Almost every day the newspaper, TV, radio and magazines carry stories about the compulsive gambler who is sent to prison for a crime to support their habit, committed suicide because of the shame, or they are being locked up in a psyche ward.
Drugs and alcohol are not the only two addictions that destroy lives. While you are reading this paragraph, someone you know may be embezzling money to support their gambling problem. High school students and senior citizens are becoming addicted and seniors are spending their life savings. At their age there is no chance of returning to the work place to supplement their income. Addictions are the most untreated treatable mental illnesses and there is help. With the explosion of on-line gambling, the number of compulsive gamblers will increase.
I have an on-line Newsletter to help the female gamblers and the link is: <a href="http://www.femalegamblers.info” target=”_blank”>www.femalegamblers.info I have also written three books which detail my becoming addicted to gambling and alcohol, the devastation, and my recovery. The titles are, Gripped by Gambling, Switching Addictions, and Detour.
Sincerely,
Marilyn Lancelot
RE: Intense marketing targeting Asian American gamblers raises addiction concerns: It is their free will to spend their money in such a way. Well some of them would say that other people don’t have the right to tell them how they will spend their money. But anything that is too much is bad.