The Ethical Gambling Reform Group was founded in 2020 by Harry Levant with the mission of bringing reform, regulation, and public health policy to legalized gambling and the gambling establishment.  Harry made his last bet on April  27, 2014 and came within 30 seconds of taking his own life in the grip of a pathological gambling disorder. Harry sought help for his gambling  addiction and began the journey of treatment and recovery. This journey includes taking full responsibility for the carnage caused while in the grip of addiction.  In May 2022, Harry graduated from La Salle University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with a Master’s in Professional Counseling and now works as a substance disorder counselor and public policy advocate.  Harry utilizes his education and training as a counselor, along with his previous legal education, to serve as an advocate for Ethical Gambling Reform and public health policy. 

Harry is a member of numerous professional organizations including the American Counseling Association, Pennsylvania Counseling Association, Chi Sigma Iota Honor Society of Professional Counseling and  Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers of Pennsylvania. Harry is also the Director of Education for Stop Predatory Gambling. With 36-years of lived experience, and a deeply personal battle to overcome Gambling Addiction, Harry is proud to introduce the Ethical Gambling Reform Group.

The explosive growth of legalized gambling is a public health issue requiring reform and regulation at the federal level. The mission of the Ethical Gambling Reform Group is to advocate, educate and inform as we work for public health policy, regulation, and reform.

Ethical Gambling Reform: Nobody Wins, Unless Everybody Wins.

We want to hear your whole story

You are a person, not a diagnosis. Our comprehensive assessment tells us how to help you get your life back — a life free of interference from mental health issues or substance use.

We personalize your care plan

You are a unique individual with evolving needs. Our clinical team develops a treatment plan that meets you where you are. They revisit and adjust the plan as your needs change.

We free clinicians to focus on you

We built ETHOS to provide the optimal client experience. That’s why our clinicians spend all their time caring for clients and businesspeople run the office. Clinicians love this model, enabling us to attract the best talent.

We collaborate to help you

Our clinicians collaborate with one another to give you the benefit of every specialist’s experience and expertise. We also collaborate with others who are or have been involved in your care, such as residential programs, medical and therapy practices, MAT providers, EAPs and schools.

Steve Martorano 
The Behavioral Corner is produced in partnership with Retreat Behavioral Health -- where healing happens.

The Behavioral Corner  
Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano, and this is the Behavioral Corner; you're invited to hang with us as we've discussed the ways we live today, the choices we make, the things we do, and how they affect our health and well-being. So you're on the corner, the Behavioral Corner. Please hang around a while.

Steve Martorano 
Hi, everybody, welcome to the Behavioral Corner. It's me, Steve Martorano hanging. It's what I do. Imagine that I stand here at the intersection of important topics and interesting people. And you know what, I'm one of the luckiest guys alive, I keep bumping into very fascinating people, at least I hope you find them fascinating. It's called behavioral health. So it's a podcast about everything because everything affects our behavioral health. And it is made possible by our underwriting partners, Retreat Behavioral Health, about which you will hear more later. As I sit here recording this. And that's what this is recording our great secular holiday, the Super Bowl has come and gone. So I won't try to fool you into thinking that I know who won, although congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles on their second Super Bowl in five years. And if that's not the case, then I'll deny having said it anyway. We're talking about appropriately enough gambling, and we're talking about it because the Super Bowl, sees something upwards of $16 billion wagered on it,. Gambling has always been with us. To just give you a brief idea of it, I was thinking of something that I read, I actually stumbled into a Bible once and read from the New Testament, the Gospel according to Matthew, where he tells us that after they had nailed Jesus to the cross, the soldiers gambled for his clothes, by throwing dice. So as you can see from that gambling has been with us for a very long time, and I daresay, predates the crucifixion. And it's not going anywhere. So what's the problem? And therein lies our topic today, because our guest is going to tell us what that problem is, and better than ______ telling us what the problem is. He has a prescription. And it's a pretty well-thought-out one on what needs to be done. Now gambling has exploded exponentially. Legal, almost everywhere, in fact, everywhere. Very shortly. Our guest has Harry Levant. Harry, thanks for joining us. Let me tell people a little bit about you. And your backstory Harry, I'm going to quote from one of the sites that have his bio on it, he made his last bed on April 27, 2014. And also came during that period of time, within seconds of taking his own life. Such was the trauma and grip of his gambling addiction, a pathological disorder. Harry subsequently is sought help and treatment and has achieved recovery. In that journey, he takes full responsibility for the destruction he wrought, it cost him a lot because people who trusted him had an enormous amount of faith and money. He says he lost everything in a trite expression. But it's true. And now, as we said, treatment and recovery, and he's on a journey to alert other people to what the stakes are, if you'll pardon the pun, Harry Levant. Thanks for joining us on the Behavioral Corner. I get most of that right.

Harry Levant 
Steve, you got virtually all of that right. I simply add that I hurt a lot of people. I hurt a lot of people who cared about me, and I never lose sight of that fact. And recovery is a journey I continue one day at a time.

Steve Martorano 
I'm going to begin since we've established that gambling has been around for you know, eons, we seem hardwired as a species to want to take risks in general, and gambling is just one of those demonstrations of that hardwiring. And it's not going anywhere, anytime soon. So trying to figure out what you're here to say get we're going to stop gambling. I will quote one line from a law review article you have recently written and I think it sums up what we're going to be talking about. Gambling is a topic, and I think you should begin at least in my view, you should begin with what in this context I would refer to as the National Football League, they are the capo di tutti cap of gambling in America. They are the boss of bosses. Not only do they generate a lot of revenue from gambling, they also understand it as a business. And therein lies the problem according to Harry levant. Here's the quote from the law review article. "The National Football League business partnership with gambling industries is an existential threat to public health." Period. That's a pretty big statement. Most people say it's you "evil." Most people say it's, you know, something you shouldn't waste your money on. Not many people are calling it an "existential threat." Why is that the case?

Harry Levant 
Steve, it's a great opening question. And you right gambling has been around since the dawn of time. And I am not opposed to gambling. I'm a person in recovery from a pathological gambling addiction. I didn't gamble today. I wake up tomorrow. I'm not going to gamble tomorrow when it gets here. But the issue is not the existence of gambling. I use a slightly different story to demonstrate how long the game would spin around. When the first cave person invented the first wheel, there was some schmuck three caves overlay and three to one odds that the wheel wouldn't work. And gambling is going to be around forever. It's not the existence of gambling, which for many people is a recreational activity to enjoy. The issue is, it is scientifically known, it is certain that gambling is an addictive product. Full stop. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association recognized gambling as an addictive product, and gambling disorder as an addiction on the same level, as cocaine, alcohol, heroin, opioids, tobacco, and that designation was followed shortly thereafter by the World Health Organization. Everyone involved with gambling knows that the product is addictive. The issue and the existential threat is a variety of very large forces have joined together with state government, for the first time ever state government full business owner, making money promoting a known addictive product. And what we now have, we're not dealing with the gambling industry. We're dealing with what Professor James Orford from Oxford University calls the gambling establishment. And that is we're dealing with gambling companies. We're dealing with the largest media companies in the world. We're dealing with professional sports leagues and teams, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the world's largest technology, companies, advertisers, and the government itself, and they have all come together in a business model, that the NFL is capitalizing on away, which creates what I call the existential threat to public health. More specifically, gambling has now been designed to deliver constant access to gambling action as quickly and as fast as possible. Through devices like the phone, I have in my hand, a computer that we're talking to each other on. And within any addictive product, any addictive product, delivering that product to the public, as fast as possible with instantaneous access will inexorably cause public harm. We haven't even begun to look at the scope of the public harm. But as night follows day follows night, the model that has been spearheaded by the NFL, the gambling industry, and the establishment partners, will be causing and is already causing significant harm. That's the existential threat.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, it is self-evident, or it's it should be that people are going to gamble if you grow the size of that pie. Not everyone games, but people are going to get it. But if you grow the size of that pot, you're also going to grow potential problems. As the pool of betters gets larger, the number of people who wind up in big, big trouble is going to increase as well. We've seen that in the proliferation of the marriage of those forces, you just don't do that. We know people, yourself included, who got trouble gambling, you described a perfect storm, though, of forces coming together to create the real problem. Let's get into the weeds. The problem is not on Saturday, you call somebody or you go online, and you bet Philadelphia against Kansas City and you take the points and you wait for the outcome. You're talking about something more insidious, and that is the constant stream of betting opportunities, describe that.

Harry Levant 
It's what's called micro betting, as what you said is correct, that the more people we encourage to gamble and going to cause greater the problems. You're absolutely right about that. I'm taking you a step deeper. I'm looking at the way in which gambling is being delivered. And this is what micro-betting is all about. I made my last bet in 2014. At that time, you could bet on the winner, the loser perhaps the total points. What we know is we have a system engineered by the NFL, the gambling companies, and their partners. To deliver constant access within a game. So there's betting on every micro-thing that happens within that game. Is the next play going to be a pass or a run? Was that run four yards or five yards? Was the past 15 yards? 10 yards? There are any number of betting combinations. And then the gambling companies take it a step further by creating what they call, "same game parlays," where they encourage people to increase their activity. And you see this in television commercials. They openly encourage people to bet more things within each game. The NFL, as I write about in my article, as we'll talk about today, has turned that into a for-profit business model for the league. So the more that people bed, the more the NFL makes, and the more the gambling companies make. And the more quickly people are exposed to this action, the greater the harm that inexorably has to occur.

Steve Martorano 
All of which takes place against the backdrop of the league's historical antipathy towards gambling. In fact, they went beyond saying it's something we don't want to get involved with. They spent decades telling the American public that it would ruin the integrity of the game. That they couldn't exist in the same world where people were betting on sports; of course, they were betting on sports anyway. So their hypocrisy on this issue is two things. It's breathtaking. But it's also understandable, right? I mean...

Harry Levant 
It's the best way to frame it. And rather than creating or issuing a character judgment of the hypocrisy, I prefer to look at this from a public health lens, which is why the article I wrote is about the existential threat to public health, the work that I do, both in treating people and perhaps we'll talk a little bit later about the research that I'm in the midst of doing to try and approach this issue from a public health perspective, getting into whether or not Commissioner Goodell and Jeffrey Lurie in Philadelphia, and various other owners are being hypocritical. I don't know that that gets us anywhere from a policy standpoint. However, I will share with you a direct quote from the NFL Commissioner's Office. Whereas the commissioner's office once said, and I quote, "Once the character and integrity of NFL football had been compromised," referring to gambling, "and the bonds of loyalty and devotion between fans and teams had been broken, NFL football will have been irreparably injured in a manner that cannot be calculated in dollars." Now, two things about that, quote, should immediately jump out at you. The first is the commissioner's office was concerned about the damage to the NFL, not the injury and damage being done to the public. And secondly, the fact that they said at that time, that's a quote from 2012. They said at that time, that the damages could never be calculated in dollars. Well, apparently, they found the way to calculate in dollars because they entered into partnerships with seven official gambling partners, and now sell their statistics in real-time within every game, so that the betting companies can deliver what we were talking about, which is in-game betting or micro betting within every game. The NFL gets a cut of all of that.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, the real goal here is the data you mentioned there statistics mean there is no game unless you can quantify what's going on. Tell us how that works for the NFL and their gambling industry partners.

Harry Levant 
We're singling out the NFL but all of the league and frighteningly, frighteningly, sometimes this year, it looks like you're gonna see conferences, particularly the big 10 and the SEC, doing the same thing with common sports. But let's focus on the NFL understanding that this model was replicated by the other leagues, by tennis, by NASCAR by Golf. What the NFL did, NFL entered into a partnership with a company known as Genius Sports. The NFL bought themselves a large if not controlling stake in Genius Sports. Genius Sports, among other things, is a data and statistics company. The NFL enters into a business partnership where they buy a large piece of Genius Sports. They then turn around and named Genius Sports as the official statistics provider of NFL football. Why do they do this? Because they have that running play looks like it might be four and a half yards or five yards. Somebody has to determine whether that was a 4-yard run or a 5-yard run because he can't have Caesars Sportsbook saying it's 5 yards and DraftKings saying it's 4. There has to be one answer to the question, or the entire gambling model collapses. So the NFL points to Genius Sports as the official statistics provider. They then turn to their gambling partners and say, Okay, if you want to use our statistics for gambling purposes, you have to buy them from Genius Sports. So the gambling companies are paying the exact number it can't at this point be determined because some of the companies aren't publicly traded, and the NFL is a private industry. But we've seen estimates of as much as $2 billion over five years. But they are paying a large, significant amount of money to be partners with the NFL to buy the statistics. Well, herein lies the problem. gambling companies aren't producing any products in commerce, there's nothing they can sell. The only way they can recoup the money they're spending and maximize revenue for their shareholders is to deliver increased gambling action all the time. That's how they make their money. That model is a threat to public health. And right now, the federal government is doing nothing about it. And states are full business partners. The fox is guarding the henhouse. There are a small number of us out there. And I mean, a very small number. Not the folks at the National Council on problem gambling, they're partners with the NFL, there are a small number of public health experts who are raising the red flag saying wait a minute. We've seen this before. We saw it with tobacco. We saw it with opioids. There needs to be regulation of an addictive product. People are getting hurt.

Steve Martorano  
Is there another industry where we can where similar ethical, moral, and public health issues arose? That we can look at and gain some insight into what they have to do. I'm thinking of cigarettes. I'm thinking of tobacco. Is there any lesson to learn there?

Harry Levant  
I'm thinking of a couple. I think of tobacco and alcohol and there are lessons to be learned in both. I'm privileged. As you know, I'm presently studying at Northeastern University. In addition to my work as a gambling addiction counselor and mental health therapist with ethos here in the Philadelphia area. I'm also studying to get a doctorate at Northeastern University up in Boston. And I'm working with two highly regarded law professors there, Professor Richard Dennard and Professor Mark Gottlieb, both of whom had been heavily involved in tobacco litigation. And what we learned from tobacco was that for decades, we knew...decades, that nicotine and tobacco cause cancer. That wasn't a secret to anyone. The message of the industry was that people need to smoke responsibly. What changed tobacco are two things. Number one, advocates like Professor Dennard were able to demonstrate that wait a minute, this isn't about being responsible. This is a known addictive product. That's your first parallel with gambling. You hear over and over and over again, "responsible gaming." The industry calls it gaming. Responsible gaming, responsible gaming. Responsible gaming is the gambling industry code for please permit us to regulate ourselves. We'll teach people how to behave responsibly. And oh, if they don't pay responsibly, and they get in trouble, we'll put up money to treat them. That's simply wrong. We're dealing with an addictive product. And that responsible gaming model is the moral equivalent of saying the big tobacco market your cigarettes any way you want. As long as you put up money for chemotherapy and hospice, it's okay. Well, that would never be tolerated with tobacco. And the government needs to wake up and realize the responsible gaming model is part of the threatened public act.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, it occurs to me now talking to you about this because I used to use you know, our accept the premise behind Responsible Gambling on its face. Well, that makes sense. You know, don't be stupid when you apply it to cigarettes. Can you imagine an advertising campaign that said, if you're going to smoke responsibly, it's ridiculous on its face? It's a ridiculous proposition?

Harry Levant 
It's also ridiculous, for you're absolutely correct, but it's ridiculous for a deeper and more insidious reason. And that is like going back to this time and time again. Gambling is a known addictive product. You cannot take a known addictive product and say it to the public. We are going to Let companies, billion-dollar international companies deliver this addictive product to you as quickly and as fast as possible with instantaneous access to nonstop action, and then blame the person and say they weren't being responsible. We will talk about responsibility. The responsibility has to be on the government, the sports leagues and teams the casino operators, and the technology companies to regulate how this product is distributed, and how we determine whether it is safe for particular groups of people to use. None of those guardrails exist. So responsible gaming, Steve, is we fish people out of the river once they've started drowning. What needs to happen with reform is we need to put guardrails up to stop people from falling into this river in the first place.

Steve Martorano 
My guest is Harry Levant. Harry's, among many other things, the founder, as he said, of the Ethical Gambling Reform Group. So let's talk about what some of these regulations might look like. One of the things that occurred to me and before I found that about your work, or even thought about the insight you brought here, was that when I watch the Gopher, that's the mascot for the Pennsylvania lottery. And it's so cute and cuddly and harmless and incessantly on television encouraging people to play the lottery, I always...I always stop and go, Wait a minute. The lottery is intended to raise revenues to help senior citizens or whatever why would they want to slide so much of their profit into advertising campaigns? People are going to play the lottery. It's not a secret. It's there. And secondly, that doesn't seem right to me that you would encourage people through the power of advertising to gamble. Is that one of the regulations you'd like to see stop?

Harry Levant 
"Keep on scratching," the Pennsylvania lottery likes to say. Advertising is, I like to refer to it, the tip of the iceberg. It's part of the problem that we all of us can see. There is a lot more problem that exists underneath the surface that we aren't going to fully understand till we have more conversations like this one. But everybody, even people who spend a significant amount of time gambling, is telling you there's too much gambling advertising. But let's be more specific. I'm a gambling addiction counselor and therapist at Ethros Treatment center. I cannot begin to tell you how many phone calls we're getting right now. For people who are getting in trouble with what the gambling companies are calling risk-free bets. Or the folks of FanDuel and DraftKings have recently changed the verbiage from risk-free bet to "No Sweat Bet." Well, first of all, if you're sweating even in the first place, it's a sign of a problem that is supposed to be recreational. Why would someone be sweating something that's enjoyable? The verbiage isn't what matters. What matters is that you will see this. And folks who are tuning into this podcast will have spent the weekend seeing it FanDuel is advertising for the Super Bowl, the $3,000 no-sweat bet. Sign up for a $3,000 No sweat bet. And the way it works is first. You have to lose $3,000. Now, there are no mechanisms at all to determine whether the person wagering $3,000 had the financial wherewithal to afford that bet. We have no affordability checks in gambling. We desperately need affordability checks that are not going to happen without the federal government getting involved. And as a policy advocate, it's something I'll be working for. But there also is going to be a role for litigation here. Because each state has its own unfair business practices and unfair advertising laws, they vary from state to state. But if you tell the public that there's a no-sweat bet or a risk-free bet, the public's led to believe, "Wait a minute, if I make this wager, I'm going to get my money back." The cable companies don't give you their money back. What they do is they give you credits, which typically expire in 14 days, to chase the money you just lost. The money is gone. It's in money heaven. It's bye-bye. It's never coming back. You've been armed with credits to chase your losses. Steve, one of the diagnostic criteria for gambling disorder, one of the things we look for is doing a person returns after losing to chase the money they lost. The gambling companies, in partnership with the NFL and all the other sports leagues, under the watchful eye of state government, are fueling people chasing losses. That's what you see on your TV every single day.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, you know, and anybody who knows the way it works can tell you that this was a very clever Oh, perhaps not that clever, as the Brits say, "too clever by one by one half" attempt to compete with the illegal betting operators, which have an enormous advantage in two areas once you don't pay taxes on that money. And they offer credit. That no-sweat bet is the technique legalized gambling is using now No, no, no, not yet putting money up. We're gonna give you the 3000, you know, they gamble and see what happens. That's what they did with that. And there's nothing, as you say, it's nothing more dangerous than telling people there's, you know, go ahead, here's some money go bet it.

Harry Levant  
Would you imagine...we talked about tobacco earlier? Can you...and I want to double back to tobacco for just a moment...in a moment. But let's go; let's go to alcohol. Could you imagine walking into a bar that recognizes you as a new customer? This is great. Buy that drink? If you don't enjoy it, the next ten is on us. The state would take the liquor license away. Rightfully so. Can you imagine a bar recognizing its best customers and each day sending them promotional material to come in today? The next two drinks are on us. This is what's happening every day. People who get involved with gambling are being bombarded with promotions designed to keep them in action. Why are we permitting a company or companies? Why are we promoting an industry to promote an addictive product by recruiting people to be engaged in action as quickly as possible? The folks at points bet who? Comcast NBC is a huge, huge shareholder and has an advertisement. They run with Drew Brees all the time, live your best life, and their advertising in the game, same-game parlays get your most action as quickly as possible. I challenge anyone listening to this to tell me any other addictive product we permit to be marketed, distributed, and delivered with that model. immediate access to constant action. That's the existential threat. So, very quickly doubling back in tobacco. Yeah. The other thing that changed was tobacco, or when folks like Professor Dennard were able to show wait a minute. It's not just the person who's using tobacco that's suffering harm. If you're sitting at table 16 in a restaurant and you don't smoke, and there's someone over a table 18 And they do, the cigarette smoke they breathe into the air is causing harm to folks around them. I caused a tremendous amount of harm to myself. I also caused an unspeakable amount of harm to my family, to my friends, to my clients, and to people who cared about me and trusted me. Gambling is not about the responsible gaming messes with the industry, and the National Council on Problem Gambling try and tell states Well, only 1% of folks are ever diagnosed with gambling addiction. That's simply wrong. We don't screen for it, we don't look for it, and we have no idea how many people are actually suffering. But more importantly, for each person who suffers. A significant number of additional people are impacted. This has been looked at in other countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, and Finland. And studies repeatedly show that approximately 16% of the general public suffers harm related to gambling on an annual basis. If that is held to be true in America, you're talking 55 million people a year suffering harm. That's the conversation we need to begin to have. What damage is this product doing?

Steve Martorano 
Well, that's perfectly appropriate at this moment. That's where I was going next. When you talk about a threat to public health, what's...everybody thinks that the damage, unless they are personally affected by the damage of any kind of addictive or compulsive behavior, is the focus is narrow. The person who's abusing this is the principal victim of this thing, but the ripples are enormous. So what kinds of things are you seeing as a counselor? And what kinds of things do you think you're going to metastasize in terms of harm?

Harry Levant 
One of the things I see as a counselor, and it's one of the things that drives me to do talks like this. People aren't reaching out for help until they have suffered significant harm and pain. Part of the reason for that, we believe, is the whole responsible gaming message. The theme underlying the responsible gaming message is as long as you're responsible, then you can do this enjoyably. So we're seeing people struggle with Wait a minute, what's wrong with me? Why am I having these problems? There's a tremendous stigma around struggles with gambling. It's the only addiction where you hear the word "degenerate" assigned to it. And it's the only addiction where you go on television, and the companies that are distributing the product are telling the entire world, hey, if you're responsible, you can handle this product. So the messaging is delaying people coming in and seeking treatment.

Steve Martorano 
Or getting help. The other thing is it's subtle, but when you think about it, the distinction lets me see if you agree, a distinction might be drawn between that process you just described and other substances...addictive substances in that. Gambling offers you the promise of making things better. So as you get deeper into the hole, as long as you can bet, again, you have the chance of clearing this whole thing up. Nobody, I believe, takes heroin thinking that one more shot, and I'll be okay. So, so it has a built-in advantage in that regard in terms of damage potential.

Harry Levant 
An advantage in terms of damage potential and a disadvantage in terms of suffering. And remember this. Whether we're talking about heroin, or whether we're talking about gambling, talking about another addictive substance, there comes the point in time when a person becomes powerless, the addiction takes control, and becomes pathological. The notion that the messaging can be about responsibility is just another barrier. People are seeking help. So when you ask the question a moment ago, what are we seeing? By the time people come in for treatment, the damage that has been done to themselves and their family members and the people in their orbit actually makes it even harder for them to come into treatment and becomes a barrier to recovery. They don't see a way out. And that's a pull back into the very addictive behavior itself.

Steve Martorano 
The behaviors. It also has an additional problem in my mind of a stigma of shame, deep, deep shame. They're still attached to problem gambling or gambling addiction. They're still attached to that higher incidence of people saying that's a character flaw. We've pretty much moved past that with substances. It seems like the general public is now accepting that it's an actual disease. But you know, people looking at like, "You're right -- a degenerate. There's something wrong with this guy. He's a bum." And that makes it nice getting help harder.

Harry Levant 
And they create this model, where you have the additional stigma built in and I don't want to go too deep into the technical aspect of this. But in February of 2013, the Affordable Health Care Act that President Obama was successful in passing. The final regulations for the Affordable Health Care Act were written in 2000 in February 2013. And as part of those regulations, the Department of Health and Human Services listed ten essential elements of health care, and one of those ten essential elements of health care is covered by all substance use disorders. Now, in February 2013, gambling was still being classified as an impulse control disorder. There's something wrong with Sally or Tom. They can't control their impulses. And that's what the responsible gaming model is all about. There's something wrong with the individual; they can't control their impulses. Well, a few months later, medical science finally caught up because gambling had been called an impulse control disorder from DSM three in 1980 through DSM four, but in May of 2013, DSM five is published. And in DSM five, gambling is recategorized. As a full-fledged addiction, the exact same diagnostic criteria as heroin, opioid, cocaine, alcohol, and tobacco. Well, if gambling is an addictive product, categorized with all the other substance orders. By federal law streetman for gambling should be covered under every health insurance policy. What the gambling industry is convincing the insurance industry and states to do is say, "Don't do that. Don't deal with health insurance." We'll put up money to pay for treatment under the 1-800-GAMBLER system. So think about this for a moment. The very companies that are promoting the product in the way in which we've been describing are then saying, "It's okay. We'll pay for treatment." No, that's not okay. What needs to happen here, among the other reforms, is that the federal government has to mandate that gambling is covered under every health insurance policy, just like drugs and alcohol. So that people have access to treatment at every level, from inpatient, through partial hospitalization, through intensive outpatient to general outpatient through individual therapy. None of that exists under the 1-800-GAMBLER model, but you're limited to the individualized care of a certain select group of people and...

Steve Martorano 
And private pay, right?

Harry Levant 
It's the initial pay through 1-800-GAMBLER responded in most states by the gambling industry. But that's denying you the full range of services available for folks who are dealing with drugs and alcohol.

Steve Martorano 
Medicare does not cover compulsive gambling or gambling addiction the way it does other substance abuse disorders.

Harry Levant  
The federal government has not yet recognized gambling as a full-fledged addiction and the way it has been recognized in DSM. And this is one of the things I'm working on up at Northeastern because...

Steve Martorano 
You got the medical establishment over here saying we recognize it and treat it as a disease. And the government going, Well, I don't know about that. Let's take our time."

Harry Levant 
You have the medical establishment, the psychological establishment. You have counselors, you have social workers, you have the science record, and you have the World Health Organization recognizing it. And if we could make this fundamental change, it would have a huge ripple effect because all of this money that the industry is saying, "Look, we put up this money for treatment." Wait a minute; that money could be used to defray any additional insurance premiums. And it could be used to set up independent research that the gambling industry does not get to put its finger on the scale of to determine what is the scope of harm related to gambling and how can we deliver the product as safely as possible. These are similar to the reforms we saw with great organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Where we were able to lower the threshold. We were able to create civil penalties. These things have to happen. In the gambling industry, unfortunately, people aren't paying attention right now. They're just saying things like this" "Gambling industry, well, how much money was made in tax revenue last year?" And every one of those dollars of tax revenues is dollars lost by the public. There's nothing being sold in commerce. It's a zero-sum game.

Steve Martorano  
And we haven't factored in, this is true, also the legalization of marijuana. We have not yet seen the other side of the damage of this legalization move on on both issues, marijuana and gambling. We have not yet seen the economic downside to all these ruined lives, stolen money, lost productivity deaths. There's a cost to that. So they can talk about revenue coming in all they want. When they start having to pay it out, then they're going to know this. They're going to, hopefully, realize this was not a great deal. Let me ask you this. Before I forget, I just managed to find the article I read this morning. I don't know if you saw it. This morning's newspaper New Jersey has launched what they're calling the first of its kind program in the nation to identify problem gambling ahead of the Super Bowl. Did you read that article?

Harry Levant  
I saw the headline, but I haven't read the full article. So I'd be reticent to comment about it having not read the full article.

Steve Martorano 
I will condense this as I understand it. They claim they'll get access to data that can identify people who are gambling too often. They say it's database related, and there'll be and then get people put on exclusionary lists. They make a very big deal out of how you can get put on a list voluntarily that'll keep you out of casinos. I don't see this working for sports betting, do you?

Harry Levant 
I haven't read the article. Conceptually. I applaud the notion of trying to prevent the gambling industry from taking action from people who are not in a position to be wagering. Whether that is affordability checks, whether that's more close monitoring, all of those things are conceptually excellent talking points. I am concerned about how it's set up. I haven't looked at it yet. I'd be happy to comment further once I do, but I will point to something of concern to me here. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with self-exclusion. Self-exclusion is a tool we can use with some people sometimes in treatment, But there is no nationwide self-exclusion. And self-exclusion is part of the responsible gaming model, where the onus is put back on the individual. How much harm has that person already suffered by the time they get around to self-excluding? Go back to the top, Steve. Let's put the guardrails in place. I am very well aware of a number of people who are self-excluded in Pennsylvania and then drive across the bridge and sit in a parking lot of a convenience store and gamble on their phones in New Jersey because they were self-excluded in Pennsylvania. They went to New Jersey. One doesn't self-exclude from addiction.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah. So that's the other thing is insidious in this in that efforts like that, again, play into the notion that this is a character issue, that this is something if you want, you can stop doing all you got to do is put yourself on a list, it suddenly plays into this notion that it's not disease based.

Harry Levant 
Watch this space. We're doing some work up in Massachusetts right now. Massachusetts has some very consumer-friendly laws and regulations in the Massachusetts gaming reg..., caught me, gambling regulations that go back to about 2011, 2012, when they first had land-based casinos. The regulations in Massachusetts require the gambling industry to provide anonymous data on player tracking, I have strong reason to believe that for ten years, the gambling industry has never provided that data. Watch this space. We'll see where that goes in the weeks and months ahead. Data would be very helpful, but that is only helpful is going to be used in the appropriate way. So again, I haven't read the articles. But by the time many of the characteristics they're typically looking for have taken place, tremendous harm has already occurred. There are better ways to go about doing this.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, Harry's here sounding the alarm. This problem is enormous. And the forces are gigantic, operating in opposition to the kinds of things Harry thinks should happen. It's like a giant steamship. Do you know how difficult it is said to slow those things down and then turn them around? Well, we got to start thinking about it right now. Harry, if people want more information about your group and whether they can reach you for counseling, I don't know if you're accepting patients or not. What should they do?

Harry Levant 
We are accepting patients. They can look us up at ETHOS Treatment, LLC. That's E T H O S -- ETHOS Treatment, and they can call us at 267-669-0300.

Steve Martorano 
And we'll have those links on the Behavioral Corner website. Harry, I'd love to have you back lots of times, is this has always been not that I'm a gambler. I don't have any luck at it. And I've never been a gambler. But I can see the outlines of what the former commissioner talked about being another thing that's troubling about it, and that this emphasis on gambling will ultimately break down team loyalty. Children will grow up with a different attitude towards sports than you I had. It'll be very, I think, much less aspirational and more cynical. I mean, it reminds me, we're headed in the direction of this, you know this, you go to anybody who goes to the racetrack, and they will tell you right off the bat, the only reason those horses are running, so we can bet on. Nobody's here for the sheer joy of competition. And then we're doing that with sports. We're making it like that.

Harry Levant 
We've made it like that. And I need to say this again. I am not advocating for the end of sports betting. What I'm advocating for is an opportunity to have an honest discussion about how an addictive product is going to be regulated. Right now, you know if you have a young child 8, 10, or 12,14 -- sports have always been part of the American experience. It belongs to all of us. Well, you can't watch a sporting event without being bombarded with gambling advertising. There's something wrong that you can't watch a game with your 12-year-old without the odds scrolling across the bottom of the screen, Major League Baseball -- Major League Baseball at 5 pm every day during the season, has a show on MLB TV called a pregame spread. They're not talking about lox bagel and cream cheese. They're talking about point spreads. Why? And maybe worst of all, you know, I would love to come back and talk about this more because there are a lot of ways we can begin to address this. But I ask you just to think about it for a minute, Disney World. This is not your grandfather, your father's, or even our Disney World. Disney is a huge conglomerate that owns ABC and ESPN and has a huge financial stake in DraftKings. And, you know, you can't turn on ESPN at any time, day or night, without gambling is everywhere. We are exposing our children to a known addictive product and normalizing that product. We'll talk another time about how this is impacting college campuses. But that harm is happening. Let's start talking about it. Because I know a little bit about what it looks like. And there are ways that we can address it. But the government's going to have to be willing to step up, and the league is going to have to be willing to say, wait a minute, it has to be about something more than just greed.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, and they are the 900-pound gorilla, the National Football League, but they are very, very conscious of public opinion. And the way they look, if you're in this idea can get traction in both the public and in Congress, I think they'll pay attention. It's in their best interest not to, you know, not to destroy their own product, which is where they're headed. Harry, thanks, Harry. I'll have you back as often as you're willing to come. It's fascinating. And again, it's not just about games it's about a big public health issue that's going to get bigger. Appreciate your time so very much.

Harry Levant 
Let me close with this, Steve. The lives and families are in the balance. We need to have this discussion.

Steve Martorano 
I hope this is the first of many. The Behavioral Corner, guys. Don't forget to push the subscription button. We appreciate it and look forward to next time on the Behavioral Corner. Take care.

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