Q6: Studies have found that casinos have a negative social impact on the community around them. Doesn't this clearly state the case against having an IR? Ans: The social impact of casinos has been studied widely with varying results. There is no conclusive proof of the link between casino gaming per se and social costs such as bankruptcies, fraud and embezzlement, as evidenced in the seminal studies on the effects of gambling by the US National Opinion Research Centre (NORC) and National Gambling Impact Study Commission (NGISC). NORC's 1998 analysis of data on 100 communities between 1980 and 1997 showed no significant change in per capita bankruptcy rates in communities where casinos were introduced. Empirically, the NGISC report also reached no conclusions on whether gambling increased fraud occurrences in the general population.The Australian Productivity Commission on the other hand, highlighted that the main causal factor of problem gambling was not the casinos, but the proliferation of Electronic Gaming Machines (EGMs) in the community. Among the major gambling forms, gaming machines and lottery products were the most accessible. Casinos came last. The study identified a correlation between states with higher access to EGMs and the prevalence of problem gambling. For example, Victoria and New South Wales, which both had the widest spread of EGMs especially in clubs, also had the highest prevalence rates of problem gambling. By contrast, Western Australia, which had banned EGMs (other than in Perth's Burswood Casino), had the lowest prevalence rate.As Singapore's context may differ from the Australian and US experience, neither the NGISC's nor the APC's estimates would be a conclusive gauge for Singapore.Any cost benefit analysis should focus only on the incremental change. More than $6 billion are already being wagered every year by Singaporeans in local betting outlets. An estimated US$900 million is gambled away by Singaporeans in casinos around the world. These figures do not include Internet gambling by locals. Clearly, there would already be a significant baseline social cost associated with this group, regardless of whether the IR is built or not. The cost we should be concerned with should therefore be the incremental social cost associated with new local gamblers. If the impact of the IR is largely drawn from the existing pool of punters while attracting few new local gamblers, the incremental cost of an IR would be limited.
