*November 2007*
The game is Rum Runner. You put in your coins, place your bets, and take a chance on winning something. Every so often a message appears on the screen. “You almost won $250” it says, or some other amount of money. The chance of winning is small, as everyone knows, but it doesn’t stop people from playing. And it certainly hasn’t stopped people from losing.
And losing a lot. VLT’s are a big source of revenue for the government in New Brunswick, and all that money has to come from somewhere, but it isn’t from the pockets of winners.
The government isn’t the only one to profit from these machines – the owners of the restaurants and bars that have them also get a percentage of the money from the machines. But that’s going to change by 2009. Under a new government policy, restaurants will lose any VLT’s that they currently have.
The idea is that VLT’s should only be in age-restricted areas, like bars and casinos. Restaurants aren’t age-restricted, so they shouldn’t have video lottery machines in them that can be accessed by underage kids.
So, the government is going to take all VLT’s out of restaurants in the province, while largely leaving alone bars and other establishments that are open to people over the age of 19.
But how will this affect those restaurants that are losing their machines?
Kathy Evans is the manager of Pizza Twice on Priestman Street.
“Well, we only get a small percentage of the revenue to begin with, but we will be losing some revenue, so we’ll just have to find ways to recoup that,” she said.
Sites that have VLT’s only get 20 per cent of whatever amount comes out of the machines, while the government keeps about 60 per cent. The rest goes to the Atlantic Lottery Corporation.
Pizza Twice is between two high schools – Fredericton High, and Ecole St. Anne. The bulk of their business comes from the lunch hour rush of students looking for a slice of pizza.
“I always have to keep an eye out that the kids who come in here don’t try and play the machines, not unless they’ve got the money to pay the fine we’ll get because of it. So, I guess that it’ll be a relief that we won’t have to watch out for them anymore, once they take them out.”
There aren’t many people who come to Pizza Twice just for the VLT’s, Evans says. But those who do are about the only thing she’ll miss when the machines are gone.
“The regulars who come here are usually nice to talk to, especially on slower days, but when they [the VLT’s] are taken out, they’ll probably stop coming. That would probably be the only sad thing about losing them.”
Evans doesn’t think removing the VLT’s from restaurants will make much difference when it comes to people who are gambling addicts.
“It’s just a band-aid,” says Evans. “The people who are addicted to these things, they’ll just get their fix from somewhere else, bars aren’t going to be losing any machines, so probably more people will just go to bars to play them.”
Bars, like Dooley’s, can have up to five VLT’s. At Dooley’s, there is often a line up of regulars every morning, waiting for the bar to open so they can come in and spend money on the VLT’s.
Sarah Mclean used to work at the Dooley’s in downtown Fredericton. The regulars who play the VLT’s every day are one of the reasons the bar is able to stay open, she says.
“On a given night, especially the day after paycheques come out, I could empty the machines and take maybe $15,000 out of them, just from that one day.”
If site owners only receive 20 per cent of the money from VLT’s, then that’s still $3000 a night from just the machines. It’s not a small amount of money, and almost all of it is from the regulars who come in to spend as much as seven or eight hours sitting in front of a machine.
The government’s policy will cut the number of places in New Brunswick that have VLT’s in half. By 2009, there will be only 300 sites that can have the machines. Almost all of those will be bars like Dooley’s.
Cutting the number of places with VLT’s in half means that the gambling addicts who spend all of their time and money on them will have to stick to the bars that still have the machines. In some places there is already a problem with there not being enough machines for everyone who wants one.
“Some mornings there are actually line-ups of people waiting to play the machines. And sometimes the people who play the machines all day will even wear diapers so that they don’t have to leave the machines and risk someone else taking it from them,” said Mclean.
Increasing competition for machines could only lead to increased tensions among gambling addicts looking for their fix. In the case of Dooley’s, there are no bouncers, and often the only person working is the bartender, usually a female college student.
“I used to work until three or four in the morning – which is scary enough because Dooley’s is in an alleyway – and I’d be alone the whole night with these gamblers who were often larger men,” said Mclean.
The men who were there gambling all day sometimes asked her to lie to the wives that would call looking for their husbands. Mclean says she did lie, because she was often afraid of what the gamblers would have done if she hadn’t.
Gambling addiction takes a toll on people who have it, or know people who are addicted. One addict, who would only give his first name, Gary, says he has spent the last ten years gambling on VLT’s nearly every day.
“In the last decade I’ve wasted $100,000 on those damn machines. Not a word of lie. I was doing pretty well for myself too, I’d get a $1500 paycheque every two weeks, but the day after I got it, it would be all gone because I can’t stop playing these things,” Gary said.
“I’m embarrassed to even be here, really. I just can’t stop playing the VLT’s. I voted against them in that referendum a couple years ago, and I wish the government would just get rid of them altogether, instead of only taking them out of restaurants.”
At the same time as the government is removing VLT’s from restaurants, it’s also adding more money to the addiction programs to help gambling addicts. The total amount will be $1.5 million.
“I think the whole point of putting more money into these addiction services is just to make themselves [the government] look better. Those programs don’t work, I’ve tried them. If they were serious about curing gambling addictions, they’d just get rid of all the machines. But, they’ll never do that, you know, because then they wouldn’t be getting the money,” said Gary.
The money is what it all comes down to. From the paycheque an addict wastes in a VLT, to the $82 million that the government gets from them each year, it’s clear that VLT’s are a big source of controversy that aren’t going away anytime soon, even if the government is taking some of them away.
Reducing the amount of VLT’s will only increase tensions among the hardcore addicts who play them everyday, and that can only create more problems in the future. Even with the pressure to get rid of VLT’s, a government that needs every penny it can get for its self-sufficiency agenda isn’t likely to give up a major source of income.
And until it does, there’s always going to be gambling addicts, and as long as there are addicts, there will be millions of dollars going to the government. The cycle will continue as if it were the reels on the rum runner game for as long as there are messages that pop up and say “you almost won $250!” on them.
