Gaming Analyst Blasts 'Facts' in Hills Gambling Interview

Gaming Analyst Blasts "Facts" in Hills Online Gambling Interview
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Chad Hills, a representative of the radical religious group Focus on the Family, is a vocal opponent of the regulation and licensing of online gambling sites. Poker News Daily recently interviewed Hills on why he is against legal Internet gambling, but OCA senior gaming analyst Sherman Bradley says Hills got away with using unfounded assertions, exaggerations, and distortions.

"While PND did an excellent job of maintaining journalistic objectivity, they did not follow up Hills' answers with questions regarding his figures and facts. The truth is that much of what Hills said is simply invented, numbers thrown out as verified statistics that are in actuality made up," says Bradley.

Bradley says Focus and Hills were the source for Spencer Bachus' absurd claim that one in three teenagers who gambled online attempted suicide. The figure was supposedly from a study conducted by McGill University, but the university denied any such study had been taken or conclusion reached.

"Because these people have faith they are correct, they choose to ignore scientific, objective data proving them wrong, and state whatever thoughts they have as factual," Bradley stated. "Hills continues to push the urban myth that online gambling is far more addictive than land-based, when volumes of evidence, from Harvard Medical School on down, demonstrates otherwise."

"Hills also rejects regulation and licensing because no system is 100 percent infallible, but says in the next statement that there's no controlling foreign online casinos because they are unlicensed."

"He also claims that the UIGEA puts no more burden on the financial industry than licensing would. But licensing would be determined by the Department of the Treasury, whereas each bank currently has to decide if a transaction involves an illegal act, without guidance as to what is illegal online gambling."

"Hills says most gamblers play on three to five sites at a time. But there's no evidence to support this. He says addiction causes bankruptcy, which causes the addict to resort to criminal behavior. In what percentage of cases, and where is the scientifically conducted study?"

Bradley says much of Hills' beliefs become accepted as fact through constant repetition and circulation. He mentions the comparison of Internet gaming to crack as highly addictive as one example.

"Despite the accumulation of evidence that online gambling is relatively safe and non-addicting, the faith-guided continue to repeat their invocations otherwise, as if saying so makes it true."