AHA Early Intervention Scheme Slammed - "It will do Nothing to Reduce the Harm Caused by Gaming Machines in South Australia"

Sue Pinkerton, Secretary for Duty of Care (a consumer protection association representing gaming machine consumers and their families) likens the AHA 'early intervention initiative to the owners of the Exon Valdez sending seven bars of soap to help with the clean up of their ships oil spill. Its a case of way too little intervention for the size of the problem" Sue said.

(PRWEB) March 19, 2005 -- There are 23,000 problem gamblers in South Australia. 20,000 of them have become addicted to gambling only since the introduction of the machines. The other fourteen gambling products legally available in South Australia account for fewer than 3,000 problem gamblers.

These figures show just how harmful gambling machines can be to regular users" says Sue.

To even begin to provide an effective intervention service for people experiencing difficulties with gambling on poker machines in South Australia the AHA needs to employ at least three full time counsellors per gaming room and employ them to do nothing other than identify, approach, counsel and refer those people identified as problem gamblers on to help services."

Gaming machines are purposely programmed to attract and entrap the regular user. They are marketed so successfully as an 'entertainment that most people lose sight of the fact that they are gambling on how pixels on a computer screen may line up".

AHA General Manager John Lewis announced this week that the AHA SA branch is to employ seven counsellors by July to identify and approach potential problem gamblers.

So far researchers and the pokie barons have claimed that its impossible to pick problem gamblers from non-problem gamblers by observation of their behaviour alone."

Now it seems they expect seven counsellors covering over 500 gaming rooms operating 18 hours a day 7 days a week across the state to detect and approach any one of 20,000 gaming machine addicts in the state, around another 3 or 4 thousand 'developing addicts and any one of the 394 self excluders who may have found their way into a gaming room." Seven people cant do the work of 1500 and be effective in preventing poker machine gamblers from developing a full-blown pokies addiction."

Far from being evidence of the gambling industries commitment to dealing with the issue of problem gambling in a responsible manner, the AHAs 'early intervention scheme is evidence of the industries propaganda machine doing a lot of hard work to deflect attention away from the inherent addictiveness of the machines."

The initiative, declared by Mr Lewis to be an Australian first, is in fact little more than an imitation of a counsellor intervention program first introduced by Crown Casino in 2002. On site problem gambling counselling has been available in clubs and hotels throughout NSW and Victoria for at least two years."

It has not resulted in a reduction in numbers of people whove developed an addiction to poker machines in those states. Duty of Care does not believe the AHA version will reduce the numbers of problem gamblers in South Australia either".

Far from the program being an 'ambulance at the top of the cliff as Mr Lewis described on 5AA this week, the initiative is a flimsy mesh net placed half way down the cliff. People are still being led to the top of an overhanging cliff by a money hungry gambling industry and being encouraged to jump off 'just for fun and told to act responsibly on the way down."

The only effective early intervention program guaranteed to reduce the chances of poker machine players developing addictions to the machines purposely designed to attract and entrap consumers involves employing electricians - to turn the machines off permanently."

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