VLTS still damaging lives all these years later

Editor’s note:

Stephen Townsend had it made. A good job, money in the bank and rental properties to pay him when he retired. But he lost it all playing video lottery. A six-part King’s Journalism investigation into VLTS and the harm they do starts today with Stephen’s story.

When Stephen Townsend of Dartmouth retired in late 2017 after almost four decades as a cameraman at a local TV station, he should have been set for life.

But an insidious addiction had eaten away much of his life savings.

Spin by spin, he was drawn in by video lottery terminals, gambling machines long known to be addictive, and installed and overseen by his provincial government.

“And there have been times where I’ve come back and I’ve lost quite a bit of money and I’ve basically zoned out for about two or three days, like just mentally incapacitated because you just can’t believe that you know, you’ve come that low.”

Despite years of investing, he ended up with only the Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security to support him.

“I’ve never joined a pension plan. I had my own investments, and they’re gone,” Townsend said. “I had two investment properties that

I was getting three rents (from). Those are gone. So, for the rest of my life, that income is gone. Plus all the trips I could’ve (taken)….”

Townsend figures he has lost at least half a million dollars on VLTS in three decades of playing.

“Before I got addicted to these machines, they used to call me the Bank of Townsend at work; I always had money and I never understood why my friends at work would run out . ... And then I got this addiction, and it’s destroyed me. Not just me. Thousands of other people”

Stories emerged soon after VLTS were introduced to Nova Scotia in 1991: people driven to ruin, financial crime and suicide. But governments of successive political stripes have been unwilling to let go of the machines and the money they bring in.

In 2010, King’s journalism students investigated the damage to people’s lives caused by the machines nicknamed the “crack cocaine of gambling.” Now, a new King’s student investigation has found that more than a decade later, the province’s VLT business is remarkably healthy, even if many players are not.

The average VLT player in Nova Scotia put $11,000 into the machines and lost $2,400 in 2019-20, the year before COVID lockdowns shut down VLT locations for weeks on end. Many spent and lost far more than that.

Those losses put tens of millions of dollars into the hands of the Nova Scotia government and the businesses that host the machines. The gaming corporation argues that while the machines do harm some players — about one in every 10 is in the most severe problem gambler category — it’s better to have the government running them than someone else.

“There’s many aspects to the entertainment industry, many aspects to the gambling industry,” said Bob Mackinnon, the corporation’s president, in an interview. “So VLTS are part of that and we believe it’s important for that which is in place to be regulated and as responsible as possible.”

But Peter Mckenna, a University of Prince Edward Island political science professor who wrote a book about VLTS in Atlantic Canada and remains an ardent critic, said the gambling machines are not a form of entertainment. Instead, he argues, they represent a government that willfully hurts its citizens for easy money.

“There’s no other gambling like VLTS, no matter what anyone says, argues or suggests,” he said “There’s nothing that’s as addictive; there’s nothing as dangerous.”

He wants them banned.

CRACK COCAINE OF GAMBLING

VLTS got the nickname “the crack cocaine of gambling” because of how easily people can become hooked. Bruce Dienes, chair of the group Gambling Risk Informed Nova Scotia, said they are designed to be manipulative, and people are not warned of this before they play.

“And if you think about human evolution, if you’re out on the Serengeti and you’re going hunting, and you’re throwing your spear and you just miss by a quarter inch, that’s really useful information because the next time you get to feed your family, because you can make corrections.

“So what will happen (with VLTS) is that you know that things will spin and ‘Oh, it almost won!’ So that’s… just an intentional manipulation of our instinctive attention to near misses and making us more likely to continue to play.”

Elizabeth Stephen sees the effects in her private counselling practice.

“Despite the proliferation of other types of gambling, the majority of people I see and the majority of people who call the (provincial) support network help line, are still machine gamblers,” she said.

Stephen is a gambling addictions specialist who previously worked for the Nova Scotia Health Authority.

“I have not yet had a VLT machine gambler be able to manage their gambling. They’ve had to stop”

She likens the government running VLTS to the NSLC selling cocaine.

“I often see people when things are really bad, so they’re already bankrupt; sometimes they’ve already lost a job. Sometimes they have committed a crime and they’re now facing charges … and some of my clients have gone to jail.”

We spoke to one of Stephen’s clients, who asked that her name not be used as she is trying to move on with her life.

Between 2012 and 2015, the Hrm-area woman, now in her 60s, stole $80,000 from her employer to feed into VLTS.

“When I look back now and I think about it, and I think, ‘Oh, my heavens, I actually did that, I could just shake my head” she said. “But then, it’s an addiction ... people lose their houses over those machines.”

She said she feels deep shame for what she did and said gambling on VLTS became central to her life.

“I was even getting up at five o’clock in the morning and going to gamble before I went to work,” she remembered. “And I couldn’t wait to get out of work at night, and I wouldn’t even go home first.”

She kept gambling to try to win back her losses, something she realizes now is impossible.

“You were always robbing Peter to pay Paul. … It was just awful, awful, awful,” she said.

After admitting to police what she had done, the woman pleaded guilty to fraud greater than $5,000 in provincial court.

The judge opted not to put her behind bars. One reason for that was her gambling disorder. He gave her a twoyear conditional sentence to be served in the community, with 14 months of house arrest and another 10 months with a curfew, to be followed by three years on probation.

HARM APPARENT EARLY

VLTS were first introduced in 1991 by the Progressive Conservative government of Donald Cameron, which said legalized, government-regulated VLTS were preferable to the estimated 4,000 “grey market” machines operating at the time.

The new, governmentsponsored machines were placed in locations such as convenience stores and laundromats, as well as in liquorlicensed establishments.

Within two years they were removed from the nonlicensed premises as evidence of problems mounted and as the years went on, alarm only increased.

At the beginning of the 2000s, the machines were modified to add a clock showing the time of day, the amount in the “bank” was changed to display in dollars, pop up reminders of continued play were added and the player is forced to cash out every two and a half hours. These features were supposed to help players avoid running into harm.

In 2005, the Conservative government of John Hamm introduced the province’s first ever gaming strategy. It included further measures that were supposed to limit the damage from VLTS, including eliminating the “stop” button. It had allowed a player to cut straight to the outcome of a “spin,” without the simulated slot machine or other game presentation. The changes also lengthened the average length of a “spin” from 2.96 seconds to 3.84 seconds, so players had to wait about an extra second to bet again.

The strategy also cut the number of VLTS in for-profit businesses by 1,000, initially by 800, and later by another 200 through attrition as businesses with VLTS voluntarily gave up the machines or closed altogether.

By 2011, the NDP government unveiled its own Responsible Gaming Strategy. It was a much shorter and less detailed document than Hamm’s, with a tone far more sympathetic to gambling.

The new strategy noted the importance of VLTS to the businesses that housed them and said that VLTS and their players had been stigmatized. It promised to reduce the number of machines through attrition, though that process has been slow. We explore why later in this series.

The NDP also announced that a system that issued cards to players to allow them to control their spending, introduced on a voluntary basis in 2010, would be made mandatory in 2012. But My-play, as it was dubbed, was killed by the Liberals under Stephen Mcneil in 2014, who said it didn’t deter problem gamblers, but discouraged people who gambled recreationally, resulting in a loss of revenues.

After the government scrapped My-play, revenues from VLTS started trending up again.

Players of VLTS in the other three Atlantic provinces can use cards or a log-on to set up voluntary limits on time played and money spent, Atlantic Lottery says, but since the demise of My-play, there hasn’t been a similar feature here.

BIG MONEY

While the money going into VLTS, and coming out as profits, is less than it was in the early 2000s before the Hamm gaming strategy, the numbers are still huge. In the 2019-20 fiscal year, VLT players put $569 million into the coin slots and bill acceptors of Nova Scotia VLTS outside of First Nations, according to government figures, an average of about $11,000 per player (based on 6.5 per cent of those 19 and over playing VLTS). The next year, which saw VLT premises closed for long periods due to COVID lockdowns, this was down to $429 million.

Much of the money fed in is returned when players cash out their prizes, just under 80 per cent.

Net revenues after prizes was $123 million in 2019-20 and $91 million in 2020-21. This amount represents the money that players lost.

RESPONSIBLE GAMBLING

The Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation has as part of its mandate the promotion of responsible gambling. It provides various resources to help gamblers play within their means, including pamphlets available beside VLTS. It also provides annual responsible gambling training to video lottery retailers and casino employees and various campaigns to increase public literacy about gambling.

During his interview for this story, Mackinnon repeatedly returned to the theme.

“We also know that people who are affected by problems with their play, it is really quite a serious matter and we strive to make sure that information and resources are available.” He points to $6 million a year spent on responsible gambling programming and funding for treatment, and additional money spent by the Nova Scotia Health Authority and Health department, and said people running into trouble should reach out to services such as the Gambling Support Network.

But Dienes is critical of approaches that put the emphasis on individual gamblers having problems, rather than on the industry and machines that create the problems. He said that discourages people from seeking help, “because it’s like, ‘Oh, well, I was really stupid; I kept playing even though I was losing. So if I put myself forward, I’m going to look like an idiot and people are going to disrespect me.”

As for Stephen Townsend, he said he’s tried several times to quit, but always ended up going back. COVID forced him to take a break, as establishments were shuttered during lockdowns, but when they reopened, he was back.

He went on a cycle of ups and downs. He had a “big win” last August. “Then, of course, I lost it all. Then I got fed up and stopped playing,” Townsend said. “The same thing happened in 2020.”

Lately he’s been back on the machines, and has mostly lost money.

“They used to run radio ads, ‘Life just keeps getting better and better in Nova Scotia because of Atlantic Lottery.’ You know, they just ignore the fact they destroy hundreds, even thousands of people’s lives.”

Tuesday: Why it’s so hard to get rid of VLTS.