by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2016 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
After a half-hour rerun of
the PBS News Hour on the New Hampshire
primary, PBS ran a show that seemed to have been scheduled to tie in to the Frontline episode on sports betting (real or “fantasy”): Growing
Up Gambling, which I assumed from the
entry on the KPBS Web site to be a locally produced show about youth gambling.
It was locally produced all right, but not in San Diego; in Nebraska, though the interviewees ranged from all over the
Midwest, including a cute young man from the University of Ohio who dropped out
in his freshman year (he was wearing a T-shirt he’d got from his high-school
drama department for appearing in their student production of Arsenic and
Old Lace, perhaps in remembrance of
happier times in his life) because he’d become addicted to online wagering on
the World of Warcraft
multi-player video game. He had ended up $20,000 in debt, though as shocking as
that number seems he got off easily compared to some of the other people in the
show (the kid from Ohio was the only gambling addict interviewed who actually
showed his face on camera), one of whom had lost $65,000 and another had lost
nearly a quarter of a million and was facing having to declare bankruptcy … for
the third time. This little show from Nebraska actually did a better job
depicting the shame and terror of gambling addiction than the big New York
Times-sourced Frontline documentary, and instead of futile attempts at
prohibition what Growing Up Gambling induced you to support was more programs to treat gambling addiction as
a disease.
