There’s just something about gambling that makes people want more of it.

Jim Klein, director of the Gambling Information and Counseling Center in Utica, said that when a gambler wins a bet, there’s a feeling of euphoria released in the brain and throughout the body. It’s a feeling akin to those people get when using cocaine or alcohol.

And to a college student who may not have a full grasp of the meaning of money, that euphoria can mean trouble.

According to Klein, as the state with the highest incidence of pathological gambling, New York already is in gambling trouble. In general, he said, 3 to 4 percent of the population has some sort of gambling addiction. And when there is a casino less than 50 miles away, that number doubles. With Turning Stone Casino about 40 minutes away, that puts Syracuse University students at an added risk.

It’s not a problem that only Syracuse students face. Soon enough, every college student could have a casino near their campus.

‘Every state is starting to legalize gambling, except for Utah and Hawaii,’ Klein said.

But Turning Stone downplays the impact college students have on its business. Gerry Reed, head of media relations for the Oneida Indian Nation, which owns Turning Stone, admits that college students frequent the casino. But he claims the students are hardly the casino’s target audience.

‘We don’t market to college students,’ Reed said. ‘We don’t split it out as far as demographics, but if you walk around you’ll find that our crowd is a little bit older.’

Some students make the trip to Turning Stone – but with a plethora of available online gambling websites, students don’t even have to leave their dorm room.

Dean Muscio, a senior IST major, is one SU student who admits to having ventured into online wagering.

‘A few years ago, I started just for the fun of it,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t doing anything big. I played a lot in the 2001 World Series. I just made straight bets on who would win.’

Muscio, who used an online sports book called BetOnSports.com, claims he won more than $100 from his Internet gambling.

‘I wasn’t addicted to it,’ Muscio said. ‘I haven’t done it for a year or two, but I would do it again for the Super Bowl or another World Series event.’

Though Muscio claims his hobby is under control, for many online gamblers the urge to play again is too difficult to resist.

‘One of our pathological gamblers once told me that Internet gambling is like giving a drug addict a prescription pad,’ Klein said.

And it’s not as if these gamblers are prescribing themselves a healthy conclusion.

One out of every five pathological gamblers commits suicide, Klein said. This is an alarming statistic for college students, he said, adding that they are notorious for ignoring the problem until they are deeply rooted into the addiction. While older gamblers tend to reach out for help earlier in their addiction, college students often wait, he said.

‘Students tend to come into us more late-stage,’ Klein said, ‘when there’s really a fiscal or emotional crisis.’

Syracuse law professor Frances Zollers, who teaches a course on technology law, says students are breaking the law by gambling on these sites.

Most gambling websites are based outside the United States. Partypoker.com is based in India, Sportsbook.com runs out of London and Casino-on-Net.com is located in Spain.

While it may be legal for these sites to offer online gambling from those places, it is illegal for American citizens to take part in the action. The only gambling that can legally occur in the United States is in approved gaming areas like Las Vegas, Atlantic City or a reservation with a casino.

‘(Online gamblers) may or may not get caught,’ Zollers said. ‘If some local prosecutor gets this in his head that he should go after this, he could.’

In order to do so, however, the prosecutor would have to subpoena Internet history records from computers suspected of being used for gambling, which isn’t likely to happen.

Recently, credit card companies have decided to step in to try to prevent the online gambling by refusing to pay money owed to gambling sites.

‘The whole idea was to try and make that be a way that would deter online gambling,’ Zollers said.

Again, there are ways around the system. In addition to services like PayPal, which allows people an alternative way to pay for online purchases, there are similar offshore sites, like ecredit.com, which is more likely to be accepted by these gambling sites due to legal issues with U.S. companies.

If an online gambler is determined enough, though, these obstacles aren’t insurmountable.

‘It does happen, but there are risks associated,’ Zollers said. ‘The students are downloading music, and that’s not legal either.’

Most student gamblers, like Muscio, are at least somewhat aware of the dangers. Still, they don’t feel threatened by law enforcement or the university.

‘I’m not too concerned, to tell you the truth,’ Muscio said. ‘A lot of other illegal stuff goes on in this campus that’s more illegal than gambling.’

But still, Klein insists that a gambler faces greater risks than litigation.

‘Everything you’re supposed to gain in college,’ he said, ‘gambling will take away.’

Published on January 28, 2004 at 12:00 pm