So hear I am reading The Podunkian and this bullshit article about Chances, the money they have made or taken away from the addicted gamblers. Jacko seems very pleased to accept the taxes from this horrible place that they call a business. In the beginning we were asked for our input of this thing coming here and when the crowd showed up at City Hall, council had already made up their mind except Joy, I believe. So our Mayor now celebrates the fact that the city will be getting this dirty money. Why do they not set up something with the crooked Liberals no and get money back from all the F/N Drug Dealers who have been destroying our kids, youth and the adults who I am sure frequent Chances as well. Come on Jack why not put a sign on the highway saying incorp…Dirty Money. This is all so wrong when we have organizations who live off profit from youth programs and a city council that depends on dirty money to keep going. I know that some or many of you will come at me but what the hell does it take to make people think.
Whoa watch the height of the high horse there Justin Case. Dirty money … really … I think that the 43 local charities and the people that benefit from those charities would have a totally different opinion. Our school PAC is happy to receive the funds that we do, we can purchase extras like new play ground equipment etc for our kids.
People will spend money for whatever they chose … do you think that if the casino was not here that people would suddenly stop gambling? I for one would rather have legal gambling than the underground gambling. At least the City and the charities are getting some benefit from the casino being here.
I have many reservations about the casino being here in town but they are too numerous to mention and have been already in previous posts from days gone by. After reading the article, I was just wondering, what events has the casino sponsored and where will this revenue be allocated in the community.? Sure haven’t seen any positive aspects of its being here when I walk down the streets 
When the bingo hall shut down for a bit while the gaming centre was still being constructed, there were people running bingo’s out of their homes. It took the blink of an eye for illegal gambling to fill the void.
I have never been into the casino to gamble however I do understand that many are drawn there for it and lose alot of money that they probably did not have to spend. At the same time I have to say though, these people would have been playing keno and other lotto all around town anyway. Many charities in town do gain from having the casino in place. Pros and cons are endless I am sure but I would not say that people gamble their money away just because the casino moved in.
My problem with this tax money that Mussallem is so happy about is yes there are many who have lost their shirts and homes, do we hear about this? I do know of some organizations who refuse to take this money. Let us be real and admit that it is dirty money in the long run. Now they are aiming at putting more drinking outlets around town lets get real.
So what’s the solution? What’s your suggestion?
I honestly do not know what the solution is Mike, but when people like you and I see the end results, it gets very sad. We will not win as for the drugs because too many people depend on their jobs, Busting, Selling, Defending, Judging, Councilling.
I’m starting to think the issue isn’t really about money anymore, it’s the people of Prince Rupert themselves (including me).
We should give ourselves some whip lashing.
Why? Because we voted in this “wanna be” city council. 
Welcome to South Korea my friend.
How is the casino (er, ‘gaming center’) any different from all the bars in town? People lose their shirts and spend money they don’t have there as well. Same goes for drugs, although drugs aren’t socially acceptable (at least, not in the same way that bars are).
As it has already been said here, at least there are some charitable organizations that are receiving the benefits of it.
Don’t get me wrong - I do not believe that just because we can’t make all these things happen (like less bars, less drug dealers, less gambling), doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t TRY… but it’s hard to argue in this economy with this kind of ‘income’ to charities and the city. It all comes down to personal choice - people have a choice to dump their money at the casino, drink themselves silly in bars or get stoned on drugs. I am 100% behind any and all help for these issues like counsellors, treatment facilities, 12-step groups - but it really does all boil down to personal choice - and until each person hits their bottom and wants the help to stop, their chances for success can be very low.
The casino victimizes those who are bad at math.
This topic had me reaching for the March 2009 copy of Reader’s Digest and the POV article within by Jay Teitel-
He tells of a five year long study by Robert Williams, a professor of Health Sciences at the University of Alberta and a coordinator of the Alberta Gaming Research Institute. He was looking at the impact of gambling and his research has made him dubious of the ‘oft-repeated claim that the economic benefits from legalized gambling outweigh the social costs.’
“The only jurisdictions where this might be true are places like Nevada, New Jersey, Monaco and Macao”, says Williams. “Gambling there produces true wealth because the origin of the money is not local but from tourists outside of the jurisdiction. And those places incur fewer social costs because the tourists drop all their gambling money dollars and then take their problems home with them.” Basically put, no NEW wealth is truely created in Canadian casinos away from the US border, the money is simply redistributed.
He further goes on to say that the money for the most part ends up in the casinos because it has been redistributed from elsewhere, mainly private industries like restaurants,hotels, bowling alleys and lounges,etc. Even worse, the system is fueled by addiction with an estimate that a third of all revenues collected by legal gambling comes out of the pockets of problem gamblers.
It was an interesting article-I’ve never been interested in any form of gambling and despite the fact I live about 20 mins away from two casinos, have no interest in ever stepping inside one. I do however see seniors and a large number of almost daily gamblers coming into my workplace and spending money that some can barely afford on their “fix” and I wonder if it’s worth the money the government hands out from legalised gambling to charities and sports groups,etc to continue to take away from “Peter” to pay “Paul” when sometimes Peter really can’t help himself…
It’s fine to point to Government or the casino’s as the evil boogey man. Ask yourselves what the options are here? Do we just ban organized gambling? Prohibition never works, no matter what the vice. So what do we do?
I think the first thing we need to do is realize that in small isolated markets like Rupert, gambling is a zero-sum game, or even a negative-sum game. There’s no money magically created for the local economy, it’s just shuffled around.
My father used to run a nightclub (where I was a bartender for a couple of summers, but that’s another story). When he put in the video gambling machines, the gambling revenue went up almost exactly the same amount of money that liquor and tips amounts went down. People came to the club with x amount of money, and that’s how much they spent, whether it was on booze, tips, or gambling.
Now whether it’s a bad thing to shuffle money around or not is debatable. But to have government essentially bless gambling, and surround it with some aura of being magical mystery revenue machine isn’t honest. Gambling is bad, the house always wins, and some people have serious addiction problems. No amount of shuffling money around a community will change that.
So what’s to be done? Maybe nothing, I don’t know. But at least stop pretending there’s magic money creation going on, and that there’s no harm being done. Maybe that’s a first step.
I’ve heard that Super 7 is being scrubbed because it’s not doing well (ie, not “sexy” enough) and a whole new lottery is being put in it’s place. It’s hard keeping up with the constant stream of BC Lottery scratch 'n win tickets-they are getting bigger, brighter and certainly more expensive as time goes on. The people who think they are simply spending a few bucks here and there on them don’t seem to realise that those few bucks start adding up to serious money over the course of a year and they just love the sensation of perhaps holding some kind of winnings in those brightly colored pieces of cardboardy paper. The stores make very little on selling lottery tickets or scratch cards but I can’t even picture the howls of protests we would hear if we decided not to further their gambling like we decided to stop selling cigarettes a while back…
The casinos and the goverment like the bucks gambling brings in and I seriously doubt anything Joe Public says or does in protest is going to shut down this golden goose. Sadly, once a community gets into the lottery business, they are in much the same place as the goverment is since they’d be shooting themselves in the foot to get rid of the money-maker, wouldn’t they?? It’s a circle of wanting revenue and finding an easy way to make it look like good clean fun yet not wanting to admit that it’s hurting people and other businesses at the same time yet looking at the revenue column and thinking that maybe the hurt ain’t so bad it can’t be pushed into a corner for a while longer.
While I believe the city made a mistake in allowing Chances to set up shop, now that they are here they have every right to continue.
However, I will not be leaving any of my money in ANY of their local business ventures, including Rupert Hotel and Solly’s, or any other local business they may acquire. This is my right. And I will encourage others to do so also.
I would love to read something in the paper about our city council having a real deal of some real jobs and new businesses happening here. I have not seen or heard of anything positive coming that way from the city. When is someone from the city or from the chamber going to start selling this place we want to call home. Gee maybe the Angels would like to buy it . They can work dirty money.