A gambling addict in BC has filed a lawsuit against the BC Lottery Corp. because it didn't do enough to stop her from losing over $331,000 in its casinos. Joyce May Ross says she couldn't help herself from gambling and even though she signed up for the self-exclusion program, she was allowed to continue gambling. The self-exclusion program involves the gambling company putting your name on an exclusion list, taking your photograph and having you sign a contract agreeing to not enter a BC casino for 6 months, with penalties up to $5000 in fines available for those who go anyways. Sounds like a reasonable program to me. But Ms.Ross just couldn't help herself, and even though she had signed up for the program, sh went back to the casinos, over and over and over until she had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now she's blaming the government and wants it to pay her back the money she lost. Can I get in on that? I dropped 60 bucks in a Wheel of Fortune machine and all I got was a smile from a digital Pat Sajak. There was no digital Vanna, or it was so waif-like that I missed it. But regardless, could I get reimbursed now too, now that I've had time to think about it and knowing that it didn't end with bells and whistles? I wonder if this lawsuit would still be waged if after Ms. Ross snuck back into the casino she had struck proverbial gold. I bet not and that's the safest wager around.
The NDP has predictably come a-running, backing this lawsuit with vigour. "She's a victim," they cry. "Oh horrors," they scream. "The government should have helped her," gaming critic Shane Simpson wails. Well, what about personal choice and responsibility? This woman chose to gamble. She made that choice besides not having the money for it, besides having been self-excluded, besides being told not to come back. She put the quarter in the machine, and she made the choice again, and again, and again and each time she sent the slots spinning, she made the choice again.
Is another government program really what we need here? More educational commercials? More money coming from hard-working taxpayers to fund some bureaucratic project to help people who don't even help themselves? Clearly, what is instead needed is an emphasis on personal responsibility. I know that in today's world, an especially in the Vancouver part of the BC part of the Canada part of today's world, personal responsibility is largely unheard of. We give hand-outs to everyone, treatments for everything, we are ordered to feel sympathy and understanding for all sorts of bizarre behaviour. But nonetheless, personal responsibility is what we need here and that is what Ms. Ross needed too. While it is easier to look to government to blame, to blame society, to blame addiction, to blame someone, anyone, other than yourself, the buck stops with you. And in this case, if Joyce May Ross had made the buck stop with her, she'd have at least one more buck than she has now.
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