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December 11, 2001 -- Home Page

Gambling's bad effects may make it, like tobacco, subject to lawsuits

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — John W. Kindt, a professor of business administration, recently published a study in the journal Managerial and Decision Economics that shows that the gambling and tobacco industries have significant elements in common.

Like tobacco, gambling promotion can influence vulnerable groups, which Kindt believes makes the gambling industry potentially likely to face various types of mega-lawsuits such as ones the tobacco industry settled within the last few years. If challenged in court, Kindt postulates that the gambling industry could argue that states should not benefit from such a lawsuit because states have promoted gambling. The counter argument is that the gambling industry downplayed the addictive element of gambling when presenting their casino proposals to state legislatures.

Kindt's paper is titled "The costs of addicted gamblers: Should the state initiate mega-lawsuits similar to the tobacco cases?" Only selected articles from the Managerial and Decision Economics journal are available online. For more information, refer to the Illinois News Bureau press release on Kindt's paper.