The Brief Addiction Science Information Source (BASIS)

The WAGER Vol. 5(47) - Take a Look: Public Education & Brochures

The next time you visit your favorite mall or shopping center, look out for that person who hands out brochures filled with seemingly useless information. Rather than half-heartedly accepting a handout and immediately discarding it into the first available receptacle, you might want to examine the brochure. It could be more educational than you think. A recent brief report conducted by Ladouceur, Vezina, Jacques and Ferland (2000) evaluated whether a brochure on pathological gambling could provide information to the general population. These investigators randomly recruited research participants from a shopping mall and municipal park (n=115) and assigned them to either... Read more →

Op-Ed/Editorials - Making Your Web Site Too Good Can Get You Into Trouble

Professor I. Nelson Rose Whittier Law School Costa Mesa, CA. Can you be dragged across the country, or the world, forced to defend yourself in a foreign courtroom, merely because you have a site on the World Wide Web? Judges around the U.S. are being asked that question in cases that often involve Internet gambling. The most recent example is a lawsuit filed by the National Football League against Ken Miller, doing business as the web site nfltoday.com. Miller is a resident of California and nfltoday.com, if it is located anywhere on Earth, is in California. The NFL is a... Read more →

The WAGER Vol. 5(46) - Revisiting Pathological Gambling as an Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorder

In a review of an article by Blaszczynski, which explored the relationship between pathological gambling and obsessive-compulsive behavior, the WAGER 4(19) introduced the concept of obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders. Blaszczynski found that pathological gamblers differed significantly from non-pathological gamblers on two obsessive-compulsive factors: (1) Impaired control of mental activities; and (2) Losing control over motor behaviors. He proposed that future research determine the placement of pathological gambling on the impulsivity-compulsivity spectrum. His proposal has come about in two recent works by Stein (2000) and Bienvenue et al. (2000). Findings from an earlier work by Black et al. (1994) also have relevance... Read more →

The WAGER Vol. 5(45) - GP Intervention: Now or Never?

What role do general practitioners play in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of problem gambling? The answer is not clear. A study conducted by Sean Sullivan et al. (2000) attempted to determine whether intervention for problem gamblers was considered a legitimate role for GPs in New Zealand. In addition, the investigators attempted to clarify the extent of GPs knowledge of gambling related resources and their confidence in intervening when and if a patient is identified as a problem gambler. Distributing questionnaires to GPs throughout New Zealand (n=100), Sullivan et al. split GP responses into four categories: one, general attitude toward... Read more →

The WAGER Vol. 5(44) - When is an Apparent Difference a Significant Difference?

Lottery players dream about winning. For thirteen workers at a Starbucks coffee house in Los Angeles, California this dream came true eighty-seven million times this past October. However, for one of the thirteen winners the celebration was ephemeral: she was only sixteen years old and ineligible to collect her prize of $6.7 million over the next twenty-six years. But believe it or not, this girl's luck took a turn for the better or the bettor. Her share of the jackpot was awarded and gladly accepted by another member of the pool of thirteen players-her mother. To some, this story of... Read more →

The WAGER Vol. 5(43) - Easy Come, Easy Go. . .Maybe

By definition, trends come and go. Arguably the same can be said for potentially addictive behavior patterns. In nineteenth century France, many free-spirits considered absinthe, a pale green liquor, as the key ingredient to what was then commonly known as l'heure verte, "the green cocktail hour." Consumed by nineteenth century notables Vincent van Gogh, Picasso, Oscar Wilde and the poets Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud, absinthe touched and possibly damaged the lives of artists and commoners alike (Arnold, 1989; Strang et al., 1999). While its hallucinogenic properties attracted drinkers with the promise of new ideas, different experiences, and... Read more →