[news] Canada has a gambling problem

[Resist!ca]

Revenues from government-run gambling operations exceeded $11.8-billion in 2003. That is a four-fold increase in just a decade. (And, to put that number in perspective, consider that the goods and services tax, the dreaded GST, brings in about $29-billion a year.) The health and social costs of gambling -- and problem gambling in particular -- are a lot more difficult to quantify. But they include increased costs for policing, courts, prisons, medical care, social assistance and economic losses to individuals and businesses.

URL: http://resist.ca/story/2005/1/7/53938/08515