By David F. D’Alessandro, chairman and CEO of John Hancock Financial Services, Inc.
Reprinted with permission from the Boston Globe. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
June 2003 – After I recently bought my 20-year-old son a car, he asked, “Dad, what kind of car did your father buy you?”
I had not thought about it for 30 years, but I replied, “My dad didn’t buy me a car, son. He stole my car.”
My dad was a gambling addict, and he needed to pay loan sharks threatening his well-being. In desperation, he took my $800 car, forged my registration, and sold it.
For a year, I took a city bus to college until I could earn enough money to buy another car.
I wish this were an isolated incident. It was not. Whether pilfering our college loan proceeds, borrowing from our friends and relatives and not repaying, or hiding under the bed when the loan-shark collectors or the FBI came calling, my father left a trail of deceit, pain, and betrayal.
I loved my father and still do. He was brilliant, a Phi Beta Kappa with an IQ of 165. He was also hard working. He not only taught school, he ran the family grocery store.
From the age of 35 until his death at 68, he gambled almost every day. He wagered with his money, with our family’s money, and with money we did not have – friends’ money, bank money, and loan-shark money. He lost his job, his freedom (jailed for forging checks), and his wife. We lost our grocery store, our apartment, our friends, and our dignity.
While, like most kids, I played Little League, attended public school, and went to church, there were many surreal moments. During one Sunday afternoon drive, when I was eight, I watched as Dad was pulled over by two “collectors.” They yanked him out of the car, threw him on the hood, and slit his shirt from navel to neck to “frighten” him into paying his debts.
He gambled away our student loans. As a result, my brother and I were unable to pay our college tuition. So, my father would take us to the racetrack just before college registration. With the military draft more intense than at any time since World War II and nonstudents draftable, my brother and I would find ourselves cheering for Thunder Cloud in the sixth race.
It was either Thunder Cloud and another semester – or a different horse and the jungles of Vietnam. The draft would always be there after college.
Gambling has its ugly side, and I can vouch for it. The capitalists promoting gambling fail to mention stories like mine – even as they hire virtually every lobbyist and PR firm and pretender available.
They speak of easy money for local governments. But they fail to hint at the millions of people who are already gambling addicts and millions who will become addicts as this nation turns itself into a giant casino.
Gambling addiction is little different from alcohol or drug dependence. It does not filter the smart from the dumb, the young from the old. Its major difference is the recruitment tools are not the local tavern or nightclub. Gambling sings its “Siren song” with:
• Slot machines for the widow who, nickel by nickel, hour by hour, loses her dead husband’s pension stipend by mid-month.
• Craps tables for the carpenter who loses his Friday paycheck while the kids anxiously wait in the car, late for baseball practice.
• Sports book rooms with 60 televised sporting events for the 18-year-old who has to bet every day or doesn’t feel “fulfilled.”
Gambling builds its army of slaves one by one. The addiction has no heart or conscience. It does not care about mortgages, child support, food, clothing, utility bills or any obligation or promises. Like a shark, it only cares about being fed.
Bring gambling close to large populations, make it accessible by public transportation, and we will reap what we sow. In a society that already has an alarming divorce rate, more gambling only means more deteriorating families.
And gambling is hardest on the families of lower-income earners, the people with hope but fewer options. Ultimately, legalized gambling is a tax on the poor – because if the people who become addicted to it aren’t poor now, daily access to gambling will make them so.
I am now fortunate to be the CEO of a major company and wealthy by most standards. People who hear about my background often say, “Wasn’t it great to grow up the way you did? It has taught you many life lessons and made you successful.”
I would have given up those lessons and even some of the success in exchange for a less painful childhood.
Supposedly, as a political issue, increased access to gambling is all about new revenue. If it really is about revenues, then tax me instead.
Please tax me – not them, the addicts-to-be – because it is their children who will pay the ultimate price. 
