We're gambling with the future.

Children are the latest victims of America's addiction to legalized gambling

AMERICANS ARE APPARENTLY A PEOPLE WHO ENJOY the risk of a wager. So much so that they re currently putting as much, as $600 billion a year on the line in the nation's various lotteries, racetracks, and at Internet and real-life casinos.

Our love of gambling also puts at risk something infinitely more precious than mere money--our future. A study ordered by the federal National Gambling Impact Study Commission (NGISC)--the first comprehensive review of this great national pastime since 1976--finds that rates of problem gambling among adults have predictably doubled since gambling became the subterranean tax of choice in 37 U.S. states. But the study also found that America's children may be the unintended victims of the willingness of states to tolerate, even encourage, the growth of the "gaming" industry and the institutionalization of gambling through state lotteries.

According to the NGISC, about 5 million adults are pathological to problem gamblers, and another 15 million adults are at risk for problem gambling. And those troubling percentages may only escalate as a generation raised on Lotto machines and legalized gambling comes of age among us. The NGISC study reports that the percentage of 16- and 17-year-olds who are at risk of becoming pathological gamblers is double that of adults.

Other studies have found children as young as 11 gambling among themselves or picking up a lottery ticket at neighborhood convenience stores. Psychologist Durand Jacobs of California's Loma Linda University Medical School reports that 12 to 17 million U.S. juveniles have gambled for money, and that perhaps as many as 2 million have been experiencing serious gambling-related problems.

The Rev. Tom Grey is the executive director of the National Coalition Against Gambling Expansion. He says that in 1970 the Mayo Clinic treated pathological gamblers in an age range between 30 and 55. In 1990, it was 17 to 70.

"What we're seeing is a rapid explosion in gambling that has penetrated two age groups that have previously been uninvolved. They've got video displays for the younger people and [day-tripping] `Slot Clubs' for senior citizens. They've packaged it as entertainment, just like shopping and the movies. They took the `bl' out of gambling; now it's gaming--it's fun."

While we're rightly alarmed when we note even minor escalations in teen suicide or alcohol and drug abuse, the growth of pathological gambling among minors seems to have escaped official and parental attention. Our media, in fact, does little more than glorify the handful of lottery winners who manage to beat the astronomical odds. Jacobs has serious misgivings about advertising portrayals of gambling, suggesting that the gaming industry may be conducting a "Joe Camel" style campaign to lure children into perceiving gambling as just a "fun and exciting" form of entertainment.

The NGISC study also found little to no improvement in local standards of living following casino openings. The tax revenue that does straggle in from casinos hardly competes with the $50 billion Grey estimates it costs to treat pathological gamblers each year. What often does result after a casino opening, though, is a "wide perception among community leaders that indebtedness tends to increase as does youth crime, forgery and credit card theft, domestic violence, child neglect, problem gambling, and alcohol/drug offenses."

In other words, while casinos certainly improve the living standards of their owners and investors, they don't appear to do a whole lot of good for anybody else. Why then do legislators stumble all over themselves to help construct this economic house of cards?

Grey blames the large political contributions made by the industry. "The facts," he says, "have always been on the `anti' side."

"I'm not a [snob] about gambling," says Jacobs. "I'm just concerned about the casualties of gambling and that so little is being done for them. They're growing fat on [lottery] revenue, but half the states with gambling don't put a single penny aside for gambling-addiction treatment."

But providing more treatment for those worst affected by gambling only begins to get at its total social costs in devastated families and ruined futures. We've been playing a sucker bet that lotteries and the proliferation of casinos would provide a relatively painless way of raising money for our states' legitimate obligations.

It's time to stop rolling the dice on the future.

By KEVIN CLARKE, managing editor of online products at Claretian Publications in Chicago.