Is Online Gambling a Public Health Threat? – The Assignment with Audie Cornish – Podcast on CNN Audio

We’re not going to start this show by implying that gambling is a new problem, or that betting on pro sports has never been a problem. But when certain pockets of the sports world first dabbled in legalization, for instance, the New York Racing Association’s legalized betting program, it was kind of a process.

You had to send actual, you know, certified check to them. They wouldn’t take wires. There was none of that. So it was a snail mail process. They would get my check. They’d put it in my account. I would have to call up and talk to a teller and say, hey, I’d like the third race at Aqueduct. $100 to win on the three. They’d repeat it. This took an enormous amount of time to do this stuff.

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Since the Supreme Court opened the doors to commercial betting in 2018. There are now 38 states, plus the District of Columbia, where sports wagers are legal, and it feels like there’s no escaping the gaming industry’s hard sell. Here’s the CEO of FanDuel, Amy Howe, on CNN just before the Super Bowl back in 2023.

We may bring half a million new customers on to the platform. A lot of those are recreational users we may not have seen before. They’ll be more women on the platform. And so it gives us an opportunity to really expose them to our industry leading product.

But these days there are rumbles of something else in the background, something not so fun. So on today’s episode, we’re going to hear from two people who come at this issue from very different personal experiences. We’ll learn what it’s like to have a gambling addiction and why the lawyer who took on Big Tobacco has his eye on digital betting next. I’m Audie Cornish, and this is The Assignment.

I’m Rex Chapman. I played basketball for most of my life. High school. College. Professionally. Played at University of Kentucky. Played for four NBA teams. I retired in 2000 and immediately became addicted to OxyContin and spent 14 years on and off of painkillers. Got off of painkillers in 2014 and been clean from painkillers for nine and a half years. Here I am.

Is that how you usually introduce yourself? No. That’s like that’s quite the calling card. Usually you say I was big on Twitter. Okay. Rex Chapman is kind of underselling himself here. He scored more than a thousand points in two years as a student at the University of Kentucky. His nickname was King Rex. He became an NBA player who made 40 million in salary alone, who, at the height of his various addictions, which included gambling, nearly lost almost $400,000 at a Las Vegas blackjack table.

You’ve always been. Not always. I’ve known you as someone who has been open about recovery.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, I’ve always been pretty open. I don’t know that I was an open book because I had so much stuff going on. I think I was just trying to distract myself from real life.

But yeah, since, since 2014, I’ve. I’ve realized secrets are not good for me. They they’re not good for me. I don’t, you know, I make sure friends and family have keys to my place, so I’m not, just sleeping the day away under the covers in the bed, depressed. So I’ve got some safeguards in place now.

I’m glad you do. I didn’t know that, Rex.

I also didn’t know gambling was part of your story. Like, I didn’t know that until I started looking into this. It’s like I understood all the other things, but I didn’t know how much of it…how much was gambling part of your story and, like, when did it even start?

Gambling, I started going with my father when I was a little kid, like five, six years old, to the racetrack, and he would sneak off and take me and my little sister with him, and we’d have a great time. He’d give us 20 bucks, we’d have hot dogs, and weirdly, they would let little kids bet at certain windows. I could go up and place a $2 bet, and it would pay for my hot dogs and show bets for the whole day. And then I’d see him at the end of the day. And then our only rule was, can’t tell your mom where we been. So it was sort of a little secret kind of thing.

Also, you went up to a teller window yourself?

Six, seven. What would happen, and I think the first time ever, probably, he walked up with with me to his favorite teller and said, this is my son Rex. And, you know, here he is. He’ll come up from time to time. And that’s what happened. I’d go up and place a $2 bet, and so I could read a racing form before I was really reading in school. So it was all kind of I didn’t realize this was gambling or something that could be bad at some point. I’ve never bet a sport in my life. I don’t bet team sports.

Why not? I mean, for obvious reasons, but, but as someone who would have grown up with it so young, what was the boundary for you that you wouldn’t cross?

Well, at first, you know, when you get into the NBA or when we did back in the day, immediately you had meetings with the league and they would bring out pictures and put them on the wall beside you of people surrounding the NBA who are known gamblers, and you can’t associate with gamblers or gambling or anything. If a friend asks you, do you think you cover the spread? You need to turn around and walk. And so we were scared to death. You know, that’s that’s the first thing. The second thing, as a sports person, betting on team sports is silly. I mean, many times when the best player on the team goes out, everybody thinks, well, yeah, they’re going to lose tonight. That doesn’t usually happen. There’s guys sitting over on the bench that are dying to play.

Right, so to you there are too many variables.

There’s too many variables. And here’s the other thing. I remember when fantasy basketball started in the 90s. And I would come off the court and people would be like yelling, you’re killing it for my fantasy team, Rex. And I have no idea what this means. None. But then you would get the other end. You suck. You’re killing my fantasy team. Well, that now has been replaced with: you cost me money. You cost me money because gambling is legal. You know, people bet through bookies forever, I’m sure, but now the players really have targets on their back because, shoot, they might have a prop bet where, “Is Rex Chapman going to score over ten points tonight?” That adds a whole other thing into, into the equation. But it kind of goes hand in hand. Look, the the leagues have decided we’re getting in bed with the gambling, and there are going to be repercussions from that for the players. It’s growing the pie. The players are making more money. The teams, the owners, everybody. The fans are, you know, really, footing the bill for this with the gambling. My biggest thing: I was such a horse racing degenerate that in the 90s, I nternet betting was not around. It was not a thing. But in a couple of pockets of the United States, Ne w York being one, they started a basically a telephone wagering account system. You had to send actual, you know, certified check to them. They wouldn’t take wires. There was none of that. So it was a snail mail process. They would get my check, they’d put it in my account. I would have to call up and talk to a teller and say, hey, I’d like the third race at Aqueduct, $100 to win on the three, and they’d say they’d repeat it. This took an enormous amount of time to do this stuff. I cannot imagine how fast I would have blown through money if I could have been doing it on my phone. “Oh I lost $1,500? Okay, here’s another 1500.”

You mentioned the idea of a prop, and I, in doing research for this story, saw a quote from Tyrese Haliburton, who is like an all star guard, Indiana Pacers, NBA. And he said this: “To half the world. I’m just helping them make money on Draft Kings or whatever. I’m a prop.” And when he said I’m a prop, I, a non gambler, thought he meant like a symbolic prop in the game of life.

It turns out he was talking about what you just mentioned a prop bet, right? The wagers, based on the stats that a particular player accrues over a game. And I’m reading that because of the way the online betting is developing into profitability, there is more emphasis on the individual player in their performance. So what you talked about the fantasy league thing is about to let go. Like the players feel it.

Yeah, the players feel it and they will definitely feel it with the gambling. You know that it’s one thing to lose your fantasy game. It’s another thing to lose $500, you know? And that’s what people are doing.

‘And not to be mean to sports fans. Being from Massachusetts, I get it. Like sports fans are intense, right? Yeah, but, like, they can be angry. They can be cantankerous. Like, there can be a kind of toxic-ness that I feel like can like it’s contagious.

I think so the the other thing is that, you know, once fantasy came around, fantasy leagues, people were watching the games for a different reason. They’re watching the player stats. A certain portion of fans are not really watching the game for the result of the game anymore.

Or the story, the narrative of…yeah.

So yeah, so that that gets lost. And so the hardest thing for me to wrap my head around with the players right now are these prop bets. And the fact that gambling used to be kind of a dark, seedy kind of thing that all of us as children. Apparently not all of us. But most of us as kids were taught, look, gambling is bad.

And you even use the phrase degenerate, right, like that was…

Degenerate…that’s but so that was always parents, teachers, everybody was trying to constantly remind people, don’t become a degenerate gambler. Don’t do that. Well, now, you know, kids are leaving high school, going to college, but everybody’s gambling. They all have gambling accounts. They all are betting on the games. They’re playing poker, they’re playing, you know, roulette. They’re playing anything that they can find online in their dorms. And that to me is just terrifying. Mix that in with the first time being gone from home.

You’re you’re first time gone from home. You have to, you know, govern yourself. You’re drinking. You’re partying. You know, it’s it’s it’s a recipe for disaster I’m afraid.

Part of me feels like legalization of things can be better, right? Like, is it better to owe that money to a company, than someone who will come and break your legs, right?

But are the problems we’re seeing now because we are seeing problems here and there, the reports, you know, are they permanent or is this just the frenzy of, like, those first few years where something’s legal, you know, and this is a little messy for a while.

No, I think this is we’re going to see something bad. Look, we already have. I don’t worry as much about the pro players. What I do worry about more than anything are these college kids, somebody some kid somewhere. They’re going to look and see. Wait, there’s a prop bet on me that I don’t score three points. You can just see it now. I just feel like it’s …we’re sitting on the precipice of something bad.

You know, soccer teams in England have betting logos on their jerseys. I watch beer commercials during sports games and I’m not an alcoholic.

Are we getting to riled up about the threat here. Because not everyone becomes an addict, right? This is not to dismiss your story, but like, not everyone ends up where you were.

No, that and that’s that. You’re exactly right. However, they’re not looking for everyone. They’re looking for the five people that start gambling and the one who can’t stop. And that one is me. You know, if you’re looking for me, you don’t need the five others. I’m gambling enough for them. I’m in it every single day. And when I say that, I can’t. I wish I could impress upon you just how lost you get. Now, for me, I have two problems. I am a drug addict at the time, at the height of my, you know, I’ve quit playing. I don’t have any other obligations except going and taking my kids to school and go to the racetrack. So I was trying to escape some other things, however. How dumb. Let’s just go to when I’m in my 20s. I’m a, you know, a wealthy basketball player making two, three, $4 million a year. How dumb it is to spend every waking minute at the track stressing over $15,000. $10,000. $5,000. If I win that, it’s not going to change my life. But if I lose and continue to lose. That damn sure is going to change my life. And that’s exactly what happened with me.

Yeah, and people talk about digital bets now. They use it for gamification, right? Because it’s just like you’re playing Candy crush, or you’re betting on the spread like it’s all clickety tap, tap, tap on your phone.

And you know what? You make a great point there. Audie, it’s Candy crush. It’s what you’re just betting. You just want the action. And if you’ve got it on your phone, I can’t imagine that. I’d have been broke so fast if there was an app on my phone that I could gamble 24 hours a day if I woke up in the middle of the night and there’s a race going on in Australia that I can bet on in two minutes, if it’s got an option to play poker, or to play blackjack, or to switch and sportsbet, I’m sure the allure is just it’s too great for so many people. And I, you know, again, I was right there with them. And for most of my life, I didn’t realize or wouldn’t admit that I had a gambling problem.

I want to end on a hopeful note because you started this conversation introducing yourself. Using some of the descriptors of what you were and what you have done and I’ve encountered you a different person. So that means that somewhere, at some point, gambling, too, was a thing you used to do.

I know this could be a long answer, but. But fundamentally, how do you think you got away from it or out of it?

Well, I when I’m uncomfortable, normally I joke. And normally I say here, it’s easy to not gamble when you don’t have any money. So, I hit rock bottom, I was arrested, I went into rehab, and I had to start learning how to live all over again. One thing I had to learn was the value of a dollar. I had never really. I’d always had money because I could play basketball from the time I was 16 or 17 years old. What am I going to do? I don’t have a degree. I don’t have anything. I have to start learning. Why am why am I here? What’s bothering me that’s making me take pills, gamble and want to run from myself all the time. And it was me. I was, you know, I was not happy with me. And so I had to figure out how to live and learn to not be a basketball player and find out things that I do like to do. I like going and play golf, I like music. I’d forgotten about so many of these things over the years because I was so lost in my addiction. When I got out of rehab, you know, I was very diligent to stay clean. I had legal issues, but I just had to keep putting one step in front of the other. Audie, I had embarrassed myself and let myself down. My folks, my sister, my friends, my family, my friends, kids who idolized me.

Stuff like that. Yeah. My kids.

Because it was like reported on in the news, etc..

‘Yeah, you know, I just felt I felt like I’d really, really let people down and decided that, you know, if if I’m going to do this and try to try to live, you know, without painkillers, then I really need to try, you know, just like I did try to become a basketball player. And just like you try to really try to succeed at it. And, you know, it wasn’t easy. But man, I had so much help, so much support. And when I say that, Audie, I you didn’t even know about some of my problems. You helping me with us as teammates at CNN+ for a very brief period, it was just beautiful to get to know you. People like yourself who have, you know, been like, hey, I’m really proud of you. Hang in there. Keep going. That stuff means something.

Rex Chapman. He’s the author of the new memoir, “It’s Hard for Me to Live with Me.” We’re going to take a short break. We’ll be right back.

Welcome back to The Assignment. We’re talking about online legalized sports betting. And for this part of the story, I wanted to talk about a kid who grew up in New York in the 1950s. Richard Daynard.

I had been what’s called a radio ham. I did a very few of them around today, I think. But, you know, amateur radio operator. And I became one at age ten. And, one of the things you do is you go to monthly meetings of, you know, local, you know, groups of ham radio operators. And it was in the backroom at Forester’s Bar and Grill on East 84th Street and, go in there and people were smoking. And this is not something that I had really encountered before. And, you know, if, if I may or may not have asked somebody to stop or made it very clear that I was, you know, really uncomfortable, you know, coughing a little bit, but they they paid no attention. It became clear that for them, smoking was normal. And if I had a problem with it, I should leave.

So a little kid says I’m coughing, and you stop, and it’s like, hey, kid, beat it. You’re a problem. You’re the problem.

He grew up to be a lawyer.

‘Richard Daynard. D-A-Y-N-A-R-D.

The Tobacco Products Liability Project in Boston, we, submitted an amicus brief on behalf of the six living former surgeon generals of the United States.

‘He was one of the lawyers who, in 1991, spoke to reporters on the steps of the Supreme Court about how tobacco companies, through co-opted research and relentless advertising, misled the public and spawned a health crisis. Now his organization is suing DraftKings, accusing the online gambling company of deceptive promotions that induce people to use, quote, a known addictive product. With big tech blurring the lines between games, gaming and gambling. I wanted to know what lessons he’s drawn from his fight against tobacco companies and what made him think it was a fight he thought he could win.

I was always interested in consumer protection, probably because my parents subscribed to Consumer Reports so when I got to teaching, I wanted to teach in the area of, you know, consumer protection to protect, both, you know, smokers or people who are in danger of becoming smokers and people, you know, who are exposed to secondhand smoke. And this being a law school class, we very quickly decided the answer was, sue the bastards.

You come to understand something I found fascinating, which is that the whole process around consumer protection, in a way, was sort of oriented around one lawsuit at a time, one person at a time. This is not to they weren’t class action suits. But you said something super fascinating, I’ve read, about how you came to understand yourself as someone who deals in wholesale, not retail. What did you mean by that?

When it came to Northeastern and this was in 1969, the dean at the time, had the bright idea that the way you get a good faculty, this is a 1960s, “Clean for Gene,” antiwar, so forth, is you say this is a school that’s going to have a progressive agenda, a social change agenda. So my colleagues, you know, tended to boot and continue to, be quite oriented into some one or another area of, you know, public interest or social change. So the work they were doing was very important work, you know, at an individual level, you know, working with immigrants, people who had been, meshed in the juvenile delinquency world, and so forth. But, you know, but they’re working with individuals. So on I got involved. I was not interested really in one on one. I, I, you know, so it’s important, but it’s not what I wanted to do. Again, I didn’t want to oil the wheels of commerce. I wanted to change the way this is thought about. At that point, we weren’t calling this public health. But what I was thinking really is it’s the public health approach. I want to change the conditions that create the problem, rather than trying to do something for each individual, you know, after they’ve suffered as a result of the the problem.

Now you’re taking on sports betting and you’re taking it on in a really interesting moment, which is when it’s kind of in its infancy in terms of the internet and legalization and the commodification right of, of it as a business, what is important and what did you learn from your tobacco years that is like helping you understand how to approach this sports betting problem?

What we’re dealing with here is we’re dealing with a product, actually. Rather than thinking about gambling or smoking, we’re thinking about the particular thing you get on your phone. The particular app you get, the way you use it, the way that you’re been induced to use it, trying to use it, hooked into using it, on your phone. Right. So you’re continually addicted to this, to this product.

But as you’re talking, I can see how you could very easily swap out phone for cigarette, right? Like the idea that you focus on the product itself that facilitates the addiction and what the company is selling.

Right. Because, you know, if you smoke a pipe, it pales in comparison to the harm that gets done by smoking cigarettes. So there’s you know, there’s been smoking, people have been smoking, but it wasn’t a public health problem until it became commercialized and cigarettes and the modern cigarette, similarly there was gambling. It was a problem.

But you think it’s about to be a bigger problem?

It is a it’s a difference in kind.

But one thing I want to jump in here is that people don’t see this as a crisis, and people don’t see this as a problem yet, and there’s a kind of excitement around it. And I feel like that is very different than when you were going after smoking.

Back in 1985. No sensible person, no sensible lawyer or law professor or legal scholar, so that suing tobacco companies had a chance. Everybody knew you couldn’t do it. They tried it in the 1950s and 1960s. It didn’t go anywhere. Nothing happened. The cases weren’t working. So at some point I remember sitting back and saying, okay, let me do a reality check. Am I psychotic? Just making this thing up because because reality isn’t being very nice to me on this one. So but I hung in there and things turned around. So that I think is what’s going to happen here with sports betting only I think it’s going to happen a lot faster. And the reason I think it’s going to happen a lot faster is that unlike tobacco in the 1980s or in the second half of the 20th century where it was ensconced, it was normal. People were used to it. There was nobody alive who could remember a day when it wasn’t, you know, common when it was a normal thing to do. Yeah. I mean, it got a big push in World War One where they distributed the cigarettes with the rations and so forth, but, it was normal. Whereas everybody can remember when sports betting, mobile sports betting, got started. Yeah. There’s nowhere where it was more than five years ago. And in terms of public reception, I think the public reception is at best mixed. Some people are excited about it. The people they’re targeting presumably are excited about it. They’re targeting guys, principally, and guys who are young guys.

‘Congressman Paul Tonko is a Democrat in New York. He’s working on, some anti-betting legislation.

What kind of legislation do you think is actually necessary to address this issue at this point? Because it doesn’t feel like they’re going to roll back the industry. Right. So what is it that you think would be effective?

Right. We’re actually working very closely with Representative Tonko. And the question is how do you do it safely? First of all, you get rid of the microbetting. You get rid of the ability to bet on whether the next pitch will be a ball or a strike.

You know, whether the, it’ll be a hit or a foul ball or and so forth. You know, how far they run will be. Will it be a, a pass or a run?

And so we should say in his legislation that’s under not using artificial intelligence to create gambling products like microbetting. That’s a good example.

Exactly. That’s that’s the most addictive stuff.

Yeah. Another thing is advertising. He he wants no sportsbook advertising during live sporting events, no programing designed to induce gambling with a bonus, etc. but it’s we’re now in a moment where advertising is so different. It’s sort of built into all of these digital products. It almost feels like there’s no way to get away from it. That feels very different from the era of putting the the label on the cigarettes.

Well, the label on cigarets didn’t do much good either. It was really getting the ads off, television and getting effective counter ads running for at least a while. You know, on television.

And in a way, tech is what’s driving this gambling moment. And it feels like it’s been much more difficult. And I’ve talked to attorneys of, for parents who are trying to sue, you know, Facebook and, Meta and Twitter, etc., over problems they see that affected their children and it’s tough. I mean, it really is an uphill battle.

That’s right. But I think I think Congressman Tanko’s approach will work, because the Supreme Court made very clear that Congress had very, very broad authority to ban this thing, a restricted and pretty much anyway. And if Congress didn’t do it or unless until Congress did it, each state had very broad authority to do that. I think there’s going to be a very quick change of opinion. So is it likely that Congressman Tonko is going to get his bill through this year? Probably not. But is he going to get people thinking about it and joining a coalition and saying, hey, wait a second. This was not on my agenda, but I think it needs to be on my agenda. And I think we’re going to see parents groups. I think that’s going to be very important. Like Mothers Against Drunk Driving was a very important group. You have a anti vaping group called Pave, Parents Against Vaping. I think there are local parents groups come in and say, wait a second, congressman or senator or congresswoman. Look what’s happening here right in your to your constituents.

And that’s a good point because the one, not one, but the most recent apology I saw in social media came for Mark Zuckerberg, two parents, right, at a congressional hearing where they were kind of heckling him.

I think that’s very powerful. And I think that’s going to turn the tide on this. As you know, people come in and say, hey, wait a second. This is affecting real people and affecting real people in a very bad way and a very predictable way. Not predictable by us. I didn’t know anything about it. I don’t understand how this works. I didn’t even realize it was addictive. And you know what is microbetting. I never heard of a microbet, so there were no microbets until you had, these, you know, sports gambling apps. So, I think people are going to look at it and say, wait a second. Yeah. We’re not against gambling generally. Yeah. It’s been around for presumably thousands of years, but this particular particularly, toxic, you know, extremely toxic form of gambling. No, that doesn’t have to be permitted.

What do you want your legacy to be?

Well, I have a piece of it already with tobacco and. Well, it depends what you mean by legacy. Well, if it’s questionable, what would I want a young person to take from this? Somebody who’s still flexible, looking for. How can I make a difference in the light in life? That, yeah you can make a difference in life. Yeah. Don’t let yourself be put off by the fact that when you share an idea people tell you no, no, no. That’s impossible. That’s not going anywhere. If they haven’t come up with really good persuasive arguments. Go forward. Go. You know, go with it. Yeah. Roll your sleeves up and, and and take it to the next step. A really important contribution is likely to be something that originally was thought of by all the right thinking people as just, it’s not done. It’s impossible. It’s stupid, it whatever. And I feel lucky. I mean, I feel blessed if that’s the word, that I was able to actually make a difference in the world. And I’d like to, as long as I’m able, I’d like to continue doing that.

‘That was Richard Daynard, a professor at Northeastern University and president of the Public Health Advocacy Institute. As we reported this story, we reached out to Draft Kings for comments on Daynard’s lawsuit. And here’s their response. I’m going to read it to you. “Draft Kings takes consumer protection and responsible gaming seriously. Draft Kings respectfully disagrees with the claims and allegations made by the Public Health Advocacy Institute. The disclosures and explanations provided to customers before they make an initial deposit are detailed, clear, conspicuous and informative.” The company goes on to say that “multiple examples are provided, and regrettably, the Institute ignored our multiple attempts to engage in an in-person dialog to carefully examine their concerns in light of these disclosures and instead filed suit.” End quote. So the company also pointed to tools that they say give users quote “information that can help empower players to make data driven decisions on their own play, as well as offer customers the ability to control how they engage with our app through cool off periods, deposit and wager limits.” And the company pointed to their work with organizations like the newly formed Responsible Online Gaming Association, among others. The company ends their statement by saying, quote, “a core priority for Draft Kings is ensuring that customers are using our products as intended for safe and responsible entertainment.” As always, here at The Assignment, we believe in transparency, and so we put the full statements in our show notes. You can find them there.

The Assignment is a production of CNN Audio. And CNN Audio has been nominated for a bunch of Webby Awards. Big congrats to all of my CNN Audio colleagues Anderson Cooper, Sanjay Gupta, David Rind and the team behind the podcast Tug of War. I also want to note that The Assignment has been nominated for two awards Best Interview Talk Show and Best Host. Thank you so much to our crew of producers here. And we know that it’s also in part thanks to you, our listeners. The Webby’s are awarded by a public vote, which means I got one more thing to ask. Can you head over to the website and vote? It’s vote.webbyawards.com and cast a vote for us. This episode of The Assignment was produced by Carla Javier. Our senior producer is Matt Martinez. Dan Dzula is our technical director, and Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio. Support comes to us from Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, John Dionora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nicole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. We got help this week from Sammy Ali and Dan Bloom. Special thanks, as always to Katie Hinman. I’m Audie Cornish. And thank you for listening.