Tell the state that you want a real, independent cost benefit analyis of expanded gambling in Massachusetts.

This week there was another major story about the amount of damage being inflicted by casinos and slot machines.

"Slot machines produce a trancelike state," said Wiley Harwell, executive director of the Oklahoma Association for Problem and Compulsive Gambling. "People lose track of time and space. Logic and reason shut down. The back of the brain lights up They're literally not cognizant that they are spending more than they should."

It explains why in 2009, more than 600 Oklahoma citizens contacted government officials to say they have a serious problem with slot machines - think of it as an "addiction acceleration problem." Those are numbers from just one year in a state with a population of about 3.6 million people...roughly one percent of the entire population of the U.S.

In sharp contrast, Toyota is being forced to do a national recall of five million cars and trucks because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had received reports of 100 incidents of "unwanted acceleration" over an eight year period. No one has referred to the one hundred drivers involved in these incidents as "problem drivers."

Public officials must stop pointing their fingers at the people using electronic gambling machines as the "problem" and instead, focus their attention on problem machines, problem environments and problem business practices.

That's why we ask you to contact U.S. Senator Mark Pryor, Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Product Safety today and request that his committee begin an immediate investigation into electronic gambling machines. If another product was found to be designed to "view every user as a potential addict", profited only by getting people into high levels of debt and caused the user's "logic and reason to shut down", it would be recalled without delay.

Electronic gambling machines have "an addiction acceleration problem." Below you will find a form letter and contact information for Senator Pryor. We encourage you to call, write or email him today and demand that he publicly investigate electronic gambling machines before even more people are hurt.

Thank you,

Les Bernal
Executive Director
Stop Predatory Gambling

Senator Mark Pryor
255 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg
Washington, D.C. 20510
p: (202) 224-2353
f: (202) 228-0908
senator@pryor.senate.gov

Dear Senator Pryor:

I am writing to request that you use your position as chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Product Safety to call for an immediate investigation into the damage being done to consumers by electronic gambling machines (EGMs) There are currently an estimated 850,000 of these machines across the country - one for every 375 Americans - and there has been virtually no public examination of this product.

According to MIT Professor Natasha Schull, the goal of the technology is to get users to "play to extinction" - which means until their money is gone. Instead of actual reels, electronic gambling machines have virtual reels that rely on complicated algorithms and virtual reel mapping, concepts that few people in the predatory gambling trade itself understand - much less policy makers and citizens considering these machines in their own communities.

According to Dr. Schull, when you look at what these algorithms are doing, it's a high tech version of "weighting the deck" or "loading the dice." She concludes by saying that a slot machine is designed to be so effective at extracting money from people that it is "a product that, for all intents and purposes, approaches every player as a potential addict -- in other words, someone who won't stop playing until his or her means are depleted."

In 2009, more than 600 Oklahoma citizens contacted government officials to say they have a serious problem with slot machines - think of it as an "addiction acceleration problem." Those are numbers from just one year in a state with a population of about 3.6 million people…roughly one percent of the entire population of the U.S.

In sharp contrast, Toyota is being forced to do a national recall of five million cars and trucks because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had received reports of 100 incidents of "unwanted acceleration" over an eight year period. No one has referred to the one hundred drivers involved in these incidents as "problem drivers."

If another product was found to be designed to "view every user as a potential addict", profited only by getting people into high levels of debt and caused the user's "logic and reason to shut down", it would be recalled without delay. Please stand up to predatory gambling interests and start investigating these machines today.

Thank you,

xxxxxxx