National Gambling Impact Study Commission Final Report

In 1996, Congress authorized a groundbreaking investigation into gambling's true cost to America. What the National Gambling Impact Study Commission uncovered was devastating. Through thousands of testimonies, economic analyses, and interviews with addiction specialists, they documented the human wreckage behind the bright lights of casinos and the glossy ads for state lotteries: bankruptcies, suicides, fractured families, and communities hollowed out by gambling addiction. But the commission also grappled honestly with the economic benefits proponents claimed - jobs, tax revenue, development - and the difficult tradeoffs inherent in a nation that had embraced gambling as never before. This is the definitive federal record of that reckoning, containing the data, the stories, and the policy recommendations that still shape debates about gambling regulation today. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how America learned - or failed to learn - the price of easy money.