Gambling Problem? You’re Not Alone.

Join host Steve Martorano as he discusses the dangerous impact of online gambling and micro-betting on public health with guests Harry Levant, a certified gambling counselor, and two Northeastern University School of Law colleagues, Richard Daynard, and Mark Gottlieb. They explore the evolution of the gambling industry and its unprecedented combination of companies, media, sports leagues, and governments, all working together to deliver for-profit what is a known addictive product. 

Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER

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The Behavioral Corner
Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano, and this is the Behavioral Corner. You're invited to hang with us as we discuss how we live today, the choices we make, what we do, and how they affect our health and well-being. So you're on the corner, the Behavioral Corner. Please hang around for a while.

Steve Martorano
Hi, everybody, welcome again to the Behavioral Corner. It's me, Steve Martorano. I hang out here and I wait for interesting people to show up. I'm very lucky in that regard. Because they, you know, they, they do, they just show up and they share their expertise and their insights with us. It's no coincidence that the second in our programs about gambling, and problems associated with gambling is coinciding with what is referred to as the popular is March Madness. And boy, talk about a great name for a situation March Madness, for those of you who are just coming from another planet, is the name used to characterize the great NCAA college basketball tournament. Great fun, and everyone loves it. And it is I think you guys will correct me down the road, a larger betting proposition than even the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl was the occasion for our first program on gambling, and what it is now as opposed to what it was. So we're talking about gambling, here on the Behavioral Corner with our guests, I want to introduce them to you now. Harry Levant is right there. And if you're looking at what I'm looking at Harry's up there in the left-hand corner. As I said, he's no stranger to the program having been telling us his story about a pathological problem with gambling, that he is now successfully overcoming. He's in recovery is also what's...I've got to get all this right...he's an internationally certified gambling counselor. As I said in recovery, he's a doctoral student at Northeastern University. He's examining and that's why he's here the impact of gambling on public health. Two of his colleagues from that great University and Boston. And by the way, I resisted the urge to wear my Red Sox cap here today. I was gonna do it. But I have too many friends in Philadelphia, from Northeastern University School of Law. Our other guests are Richard Dennard. Professor Dennard is a distinguished professor at the University of Law at Northeastern. He's been at the forefront of the legal challenge concerning big tobacco and there's the reason we mentioned the Big Tobacco connection. And you'll find out later what that's about. Thank you, Dick, for joining us. And Harry Gottlieb is with us as well. Harry is the executive director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute, also of Northeastern University, School of Law. Gentlemen welcome to the program.

Dick Daynard
It's take Dennard and Mark Gottlieb.

Steve Martorano
Oh, how did I get that backward? All right. Yeah, that's my dyslexia rearing its ugly head. Just this one thing about Boston when I worked there, I was familiar with, you know, Beantown and all these other things, but I was not familiar with the reference of Boston as the Hub. I thought, well, that makes sense it's the hub of New England, and several local people with no...no...no refer to the hub of the universe, which is exactly how I remember Bostonians. That's exactly right. It is the hub of the universe. So we got good people from a good place, Harry, let's begin with you. Gambling has been around for forever, you know, they gambled for Jesus's cloak and before that, it is an activity that people have been doing since people could it throughout that time has caused some people problems you're certainly proof of that. We know all about that. But you guys show up with a much graver picture of gambling. That involves all of us, gamblers are not have the potential for this activity, which as I said, is very old to metastasize into something that threatens public health. What changed? What made gambling so potentially threatening to us as a society? Harry?

Harry Levant
Steve, thank you for the introduction. It's a privilege to be back with you and even a greater privilege to be joined by my friends and my colleagues, Mark Gottlieb and Dick Daynard. As we talked about last time, gambling has been around from the dawn of time, I think I use the example of when the first cave person invented the first wheel. There was likely some schmuck three caves down lay a three to one odds at that wheel wouldn't work and was not going anywhere. Gambling itself, as you point out, is not the problem. However, we are living through what has become not become what is now a direct threat to public health, I see it every day with the patients that I treat at Ethos Treatment here in Philadelphia, who are struggling with gambling disorder themselves and their family. And when you ask the question what happened? It's really what is happening right now and what needs to be done about it. We're no longer talking just about the gambling industry and casinos, we're talking about what we describe as being the gambling establishment. It is a unique and unprecedented combination of gambling companies, media titans, technology companies, professional sports leagues, and teams, the players themselves, state government, and various advocacy organizations all coming together to deliver for profit what is a known addictive product. Gambling is as addictive as heroin, tobacco, opioids, alcohol, and cocaine. But now we have a series of organizations that have come together for profit, including the government itself, to deliver gambling as quickly as humanly possible as quickly as technology allows. I describe it as being a dangerous model that I call the "AAC model." They are delivering access to action and having people chase that action constantly. As with any addictive product, the more rapidly it is delivered and consumed, the greater the harm that will inexorably occur. That's the threat to public health in a nutshell.

Steve Martorano
We're reminded again, at least I am that the internet and I guess microprocessing in-toto is the sort of Frankenstein monster of our age. Everything it seems to touch it changes and in some cases demolishes business plans that have existed forever it's a beast untamed.  I'll ask Dick and Mark to jump in here. Now, I just finished reading David Milch, the brilliant writer, and creator of HBOs Deadwood. I just finished his memoir. And Milch is a fascinating guy who has demons that go back to his childhood. He's had all kinds of problems with addiction, not least of which is gambling. He is, as he describes himself a "degenerate gambler, and always has been." He has a description of casino gambling that I want to get your impression on, he said that casino gambling, the physical place is designed to provide the ability to gamble beyond time. And I thought, Okay, sounds like what Harry and the boys are talking about. Mark, is that what we're talking about beyond time?

Mark Gottlieb
Well, certainly the way casinos have been designed, not involve environmental psychology. And, you know, and a great deal of research to find out what will not only engage players, but we'll hold them there for longer periods of time than they would otherwise want to spend. And part of that, you know, are you eliminate clocks and things like that, but it's really the games themselves, particularly the electronic games that have become the dominant form of play in casinos that have that put people in, in a mental zone, if you will, that in which time does disappear, and all that matters is you know, pressing the button and I mean, they call it a drip feed approach to player engagement and they just keep playing pressing the button on whatever machine it is a slot machine, poker machine and eventually, you know, they extinguish the funds that the player came in with. Slowly, slowly, but the idea is to keep people on those devices as long as possible. And part of doing that is to make time disappear. So I think he's absolutely right.

Steve Martorano
Yeah, Dick. The immersive nature of the casinos is easy to see. And Mark pointed out there are no windows. You can't see outside. There is no outside. There's just this environment. They make the most money I understand, per square foot in a casino floor with slot machines. That's why there are more slot machines than there are crap tables. Even though craps are more fun than slots, they just make more money. And it's the constant nature of its availability of it. Is that what we're seeing now that you can gamble from your phone?

Dick Daynard
Yeah, well, obviously they've taken it to the next step, but it's, but it's more than the step it's, you know? Like, I'm reminded of when Neil Armstrong got out of the space shuttle and said one small step for a man, there's a huge step for humanity. This is like, not just a little step somewhere. This is like a whole new world. Yeah, going into space. Because...yeah, it's one thing to go to. I mean, you go back 40 years...so you wanted to go to a casino, you got a choice of either going to Vegas, or Atlantic City. That was it, well, then the other states got envious and greedy, and they figured they were going to, you know, make lots of money too. Meanwhile, even Atlantic City was turning from a resort to an apparently pretty depressing place with all kinds of businesses closing, or not opening, but they thought it was a good idea. Because it sounded like a good idea in terms of making money. Okay, so now you, you didn't have to go hundreds of thousands of miles. You could go 50 or 100 miles, depending on where you were, to a casino. But you still had to get up and go. Yeah, and most people can't do that, you know, the moment they get home from work or from school. You, okay, this is why this is a, you know, sort of a quantum leap a whole different, you know, dimension now that we've entered, where you don't have to go anywhere,. You don't have to go anywhere, you just sit there and you're on your phones, and you can play to extension, you know, without having to, you know, get out of your pajamas. And, you know, it's clearly going to be much, much, much, much worse, you know, many times worse. And, of course, you know, what do you have with repetitiveness, it would be one thing if the only thing you could bet on was the result of the game. Okay, you know, who's gonna win? And well, you know, what is there going to be to the predicted point spread or not? Okay, that's, but, of course, that's exactly the opposite of what they're going to be doing. What they are doing in some places? Which are you getting it on there? And you can bet on if the next pitch going to be a ball or strike. You know, is the, you know, is it going to be run or are they going to, you know, is it going to throw the ball, and so forth and so on. So you have micro bets, you know, it can be, you know, small or large amounts of money, but they're on micro events, tiny events that keep happening. So you keep going at it, as Harry said, it's the repetition. And, you know, Mark, and formally had used the term when we were talking about this a few months ago, which I think captures it, which is "it's not the dough, its dopamine." And in other words, what's happening is, you know, they what they've done, here and there, you know, simply following the, you know, the great example of the tobacco industry, and the junk food industry, which is they're figuring out how to fiddle with your brain. I mean, that's what they've done. They have a way to get past your normal defenses, your normal common sense, "Hey, use some common sense. Don't go keep on doing this." How do you get around that? And they figured it out. And, you know, we're going to be seeing and in the same way that, you know, you have kids who, you know, just are stuck on video games all the time. At this point, it's video games, but it's where their money or if they get their parents' credit card, their money, too, and so forth, and so on. And obviously, you know, each of these young, many of these cases will end in one or another kind of disaster. And that's where we are today.

Steve Martorano
Harry, it sounds like, it sounds like an unfair fight. Because a lot of people are sitting around going well, just don't gamble. I mean, nobody, nobody forces you to stay inside a casino. Nobody forces you, to bet on whether it's a first down or not a first down. But what I'm hearing is something far more insidious. I'm hearing of techniques that have to do with very sophisticated notions of psychology and human behavior. Now working to break down whatever kind of self-control you might have. Are you hearing when you're in your counseling area, from a generation of people who are already habituated to doing everything on their phones anyway? Are you hearing greater numbers of young people who just love the idea of being able to gamble on their phones?

Harry Levant
Hearing it, Steve, seeing it, living it with my patients every single day. Patients in their 20s, 30s, 40s, their 70s, and beyond. Dick mentioned, you had to go to casinos, you just mentioned the phone. It's not just in the psychology of this. It's in how the new model of the gambling establishment has been set up, it goes back to your initial question of what changed. Let's put some real-life examples on this because we are talking about a known addictive product in gambling, being delivered in the most dangerous and addictive ways possible. And let's look at both casino games and sporting events. Casino games, if you live in a state where there is online gambling as I do in Pennsylvania, and many other states now you will see the gambling companies particularly DraftKings doing it now, where they're advertising that you can play up to seven hands of blackjack, simultaneously at one time, instantly seven hands of blackjack at once. I submit to you that if you are playing seven hands of blackjack at one time, you are demonstrating symptoms of a potential gambling problem. And the gambling company knows this. Seven hands of blackjack all at once is not delivered with the normal or novice, or regular player in mind, it is delivered to the person who is seeking constant access to the action. And that's what the business model is built on. Dick mentioned micro biotic within every single event in every sporting event, and it started with the NFL is business model of gambling and is now morphed into every single sport. The industry and its establishment partners are delivering the ability to have action on every single thing within a game. You're even seeing rule changes designed to facilitate these things. It's why we see an instant replay on virtually every event that takes place within a sporting event. So we have some certainty for the gambler and the constant delivery of this access to the action. And then we see it in the way in which it's advertised. Same game parlays. Everything about it is designed to deliver the product in the most dangerous way possible and the government has become a partner in that model.

Steve Martorano
Yeah, well, why don't I want to talk about the alliance of forces that have come together to make this possible? It's I know, it's a cliche, but talk about an unholy alliance. We'll get to that in a second. But this whole idea of constant action access and micro-betting is astonishing. Because listening to you guys talk about it, it begins to not sound like gambling at all. In fact, that sounds like the antithesis of gambling. People gamble for all kinds of reasons. Certainly, winning and getting a little bump out of it psychologically is right there. But there's also the illusion that you're like I'm figuring this out, you know, I'm making an educated guess on who's going to win the game or I like this horse over that horse is at least some illusion that you're making an informed decision. This has nothing to do with that, does it Mark? I heard this expression like "degenerate gambler" for years. And it didn't apply to most people I knew, even heavy betters. Until I saw somebody playing Keno, in an airport in Rhode Island. I had never seen Keno before in my life. And when I thought it was flight information the first time I looked at the screen. What the hell are all those numbers? And the guy said to me, it's Keno, and he explained. Oh, I said Keno? How does that work? And he told me. Keno was numbers that flashed up on the screen what every two minutes or something...

Mark Gottlieb
Which is agonizingly slow compared to what we have now with micro-betting in-game betting. It's really it's much less like gambling and much more like the administration of a drug. As I'm listening to Harry describe, you know what he sees in his patients, and it seems...and then the Draft Kings seven blackjack hands at one time, and it reminds me of the notion of tolerance in substance use disorder where you need a higher dose to achieve the same effect. And I think that's what we're seeing now with this chasing of access to action and you know, you need to have two hands, three hands, four hands. Well now you can do seven hands and maybe we'll get 70 hands at some point because people will be willing to do that because that's what they need to get the same dopamine effect that they were when they were just playing blackjack Um, the first time so it's very much more like titrating a dose of a drug. And I think it it's not a mystery why the gambling disorder is now, you know, categorized in the DSM five, like a substance use disorder. And it's it's an addiction and not just a behavioral problem.

Harry Levant
Before you go on, on behalf of my patients and their families that I'm so privileged to work with, I do need to voice an objection to the ongoing use of the word "degenerate." I don't mean anything by it. But again, on behalf of my patients and their families, gambling addiction is the only addiction that has a descriptive adjective and for people who are listening to this, I know how important The Behavioral Corner is to the mental health community and all the people it touches and helps. But there may be somebody out there who hears that word and is a little bit discouraged from asking for help. There's nothing wrong with anyone who is struggling again, when disorder, they are a person who is struggling with a known addictive product and there is help available. So I just wanted to step in on that particular word for that particular reason.

Steve Martorano
Let me ask Dick, do people will appreciate what the potential for this thing is going forward? I've heard from my younger friends in their 30s that they know more than a few people who are, you know, their cohort who can't afford mortgages, who can't afford to pay off their college loans because they're either day trading and losing their money or now gambling all the time online? Do we have to get to a point where I'm bringing this tobacco, your background in big tobacco, do we have to get to a point where we, you know, the effects of this are so devastatingly apparent that then we get action? Or is it possible to get ahead of this? You guys. the curve on this thing.

Dick Daynard
And the problem...the problem is, this is the steamroller going so fast. And in so many different jurisdictions, and it's all going in one direction. And there's really nothing, you know, in the other direction. So you have, I mean, a great example of this was in Massachusetts, when the legislation that enabled, you know, the sports betting went through last year. The original draft of the legislation forbade betting, and being out during the game forgot forbade this kind of micro bedding. And somebody on one of the or several of the people from the gambling industry, the gambling establishment now came in and testified that now if you do that, what will happen is all this will be continued to be done, but it'll be done by gambling folks from overseas. Well, the fact is, you can't do that because the micro bets require that there'll be a definitive call made by somebody in an official position. So Harry knows this much better than I do. But the NFL purchased something called The Genius, and I think it's called, and their job is to make an official announcement. How far did the ball travel? You know, was this an extra why? And so forth. So this was a total lie. There was nobody around to call them on it. They could say anything and have been saying anything and simply nobody, there has been no counterforce, none. And therefore, they've been able to say anything they want. And, you know, tout, you know, the so-called benefits of this was nobody having any, you know, serious thoughts about hey, wait for a second, aren't we really opening up? I was gonna say a can of worms, but that's much too modest. You know, a, you know, dragons or whatever. So the fact is, nobody has gotten ahead of it. At this point...

Mark Gottlieb
They're replacing what I mean, the sort of saying, you know, oh, well, we can't, we can't let people go and get their caffeine from some out-of-state source because it needs to be that would be illegal. So instead, we're going to serve them cocaine here. I mean, they're giving them something that's much more addictive and dangerous in a regulated setting, which is quite ironic. And to get to your and also respond to your question, Steve, I do think that it's going to take, unfortunately, a lot of evidence of increased suicide and, you know, and, and the destruction of families and the impact that that has to be more publicly visible, before, policymakers are willing to jump in and you know, slow down the gravy train, because, as Dick said, this is all going in one direction right now. There are not any speed bumps being put in place to kind of control the unfettered, unbelievably rapid growth of gambling. Whether it's particularly now we have sports, gambling, but you know, everything is mobile and available 24/7 and constant, and you know, something is going to have to slow it down. And it's going to take some policy to do that.

Harry Levant
Speed bumps and guardrails. Then,...the...Dick mentioned, you know, the micro-betting in the NFL is modeled on genius sports and how regulators are fooled. Steve, you made the suggestion, there's no one doing anything about this. I submit to you, you're looking at three people who are starting to do something about this. As you know, we have a webinar tomorrow, March 15. That takes on this very topic. And I'm of the view that regulators at the state level have either been horrifically misled or are just choosing to look in an entirely different direction. I think of the magician sawing the body in half in a while. The magician is sawing the body in half she's also waving a big red handkerchief in the air to distract everyone. So no one can see how the trick really works. Thus far, the gambling establishment has been able to mislead or distract regulators. But the more that folks like Dick and Mark and myself and others begin to talk about this from a public health model and expose the absolute myth of this responsible gaming model, the quicker change, guardrails, and reform may happen,

Steve Martorano
I couldn't agree with you more. But, you know, in fairness, it's one thing to say the British are coming. And another thing is to kill the British when they do arrive. So good for sounding the alarm. Let's talk about some proscriptions here now that you might be able to arouse public interest enough to have done and, you know, Dick and Mark have great experience in going after big tobacco. I mean, there was a time in our lifetimes, for you younguns that don't know this, when smoking was so utterly acceptable, you smoke any damn place you wanted you, and no one ever conceived of telling you, you couldn't smoke. People were still smoking. But they're not smoking where they used to or as often as they did. And we've seen corresponding benefits in a public health room. I didn't think anything was bigger than big tobacco. But this looks bigger. There are some really tremendous forces that are up against this thing. Let me ask you guys, what is analogous to how you and others fought big tobacco that might be instructive? In this fight.  Dick, go ahead.

Dick Daynard
If you go back to an era when you had something over 50% of doctors smoking. You know, I think in the 1950s, it was, you know, considered relatively harmless. You know, your parents would tell you to stunt your growth or something like that. That's what I was told. When I was growing up, fortunately, it never had any particular attraction for me, so I didn't do it. But I wasn't worried about stunting my growth. I mean, that was it. They weren't talking about lung cancer. They weren't talking about emphysema. They weren't talking about heart disease. They were talking about stunting your growth. Maybe it's a rumor that, that it's bad. So you really need first to get the information out there. People have to begin to realize just how bad's of since they really need to change. I think it's really important to change the terms of discussion here. From the idea that we're talking about the dough to we're talking about the dopamine, because people thinking if you're just talking about bets and things like that, I can figure that out. Other people can figure that out. It's just a bunch of people behaving stupidly or self-destructively. But when you realize that this is really, you know, the I'm fiddling with your brain, they're fiddling with the way your body actually works. That's how they met doing this. That's the first step. The second step is to begin to pull back on the place I would start with beyond this, you know, what's called "whistle to whistle, gambling," I was from the beginning, you can't bet on anything that happens in the game between the first play and the last play, you can just bet on the result if that's what Massachusetts was going to do until they were deceived into not doing it. I think that would be the next step. You know, and then I think just looking move, you know, step by step, you know, away from the kinds of things that are causing the most massive harms -- the advertising the missing...

Steve Martorano
Yeah, well, that's the one, right, excuse me for interrupting. But that was the first thing that came to my mind, okay, this is in motion, and people want to do this crazy sort of behavior. It's to their detriment. But why? And everybody wants to legalize it because there's a lot of money here. Why in the world? Is it okay to advertise this kind of behavior? How did, for instance, how did they wind up getting tobacco advertising off of radio and television? I have had people in broadcasting telling me for years that was probably unconstitutional if you wanted to fight it on a First Amendment basis. After all, they had a legal product.

Dick Daynard
There was an answer to this. If Congress had banned the advertising, as it did initially, with radio and television advertising, with the agreement of the tobacco industry. Because there had been a doctrine that allowed counter-advertising, now that's a good one. We could go back to what's called the Banzhaf doctrine, which says that for every three minutes of what it was, for every three minutes of tobacco advertising, you had one minute of counter-advertising. The tobacco industry ended up lobbying for legislation to eliminate the right to advertise on radio and television. And when that passed, then the counter advertising, which the stations had to provide for free, they were getting paid for the tobacco advertising, not the counter-advertising. So that eliminated the counter advertising, and sales went right back up. So that was the...so I think we can, you know if we bring back the Banzhaf doctrine...

Mark Gottlieb
Or as it was known, the Fairness Doctrine. And you know, and just to play devil's advocate, I think that First Amendment jurisprudence has changed a bit since the 1960s. And the Fairness Doctrine might not survive scrutiny by the current occupants of the Supreme Court.

Dick Daynard
Oh, we don't. We actually don't know that. This would actually be a totally different thing. I'm not at all sure that it wouldn't. Let me tell you what happened with the tobacco industry. What happened is they got sued by basically all of the states -- sued them seeking they're, you know, their contribution to Medicaid, and other payments, or, you know, that they were making for it. Because, you know, said as employees and citizens were getting sick from lung cancer and other tobacco-related diseases. The tobacco industry settled in something called a master settlement agreement. Part of their settlement. was an agreement, a binding agreement, to get their advertising off of radio and television and to tone it down in other ways. No, it's off the radio on television already. So to get rid of the remaining, most of the remaining advertising,

Mark Gottlieb
Billboards, the Winston cop, things like that.

Dick Daynard
Yeah, the top of taxi cabs in Massachusetts in Boston.

Steve Martorano
What was the absence of hard liquor on television and radio a gentleman's agreement, or was that by statute?

Dick Daynard
I think it was a gentleman's agreement. Yeah. Because that's snuck right back in now.

Steve Martorano
You see, you see spirits advertised. I just think advertising is just an unconscionable thing. If you're going to unleash these forces on people who are unsuspecting and have no idea what's happening in their heads, having this stuff pumped at them constantly. That's one kettle of fish, which is horrible enough,  but to every time I see that little furry mascot of the Pennsylvania lottery, selling people, you know, oh, just keep scratching. I just want to like leave with a television set. They shouldn't use a dime to encourage anybody to gamble. People don't need any encouragement. Yeah, and of course...

Harry Levant
I'm sorry, Dick, go ahead.

Dick Daynard
I was just gonna say, and of course advertising, again, you know, is not, you know, like gambling itself and like tobacco, cigarettes, and so forth. There's not, you know, affect you it does not work by rationally persuading you. Oh, I guess it's really a good idea. Now that you think about it, considering the pluses and the minuses - to go and play, go there and better places kind of bet. That's not the way advertising has ever worked. Certainly not in the last 100 years. So the advertising itself is designed to, you know, seep into your, you know, not past your conscious defenses, past your conscious thinking. And, of course, it's doing that with gambling as well. You know, these are not persuasive arguments for doing it's easier. Hey, wait for a second. Everybody's doing it. It's cool. Looks like fun.

Steve Martorano
And then you slap got a problem called problem gambling. It's unconscionable, and that should be stopped.

Harry Levant
As you well know, everyone on this call knows I am no longer a lawyer. And I certainly was never a law professor. I defer the legal analysis to Dick and Mark. However, you asked the question, what can be done about advertising? And there are a few things that can be done that the public and regulators need to understand. First of all, when Justice Alito wrote the opinion in the Murphy case back in 2018, which paved the way for states to legalize sports betting, Justice Alito himself wrote in the opinion that states and Congress are free to regulate the gambling industry. That's number one. Number two, since 2013, the American Psychiatric Association, followed by the American Medical Association, followed by the World Health Organization have all recognized that gambling is an addictive product on the same level as heroin. Once that is recognized by the federal government, I submit, it creates much greater room for Congress to regulate. There are ways to regulate gambling advertising. What we see right now is it is unlimited it is in your face, and most of all, it is impacting children because it is taking place within every sporting event during primetime games that are just consumed with talking advertising and gambling. As I like to say, if you think back to when ABC decided they were going to show partial nudity in the TV show NYPD Blue, which David Milch, who has a huge gambling problem he is working to overcome, created, Milch couldn't show us even part of Dennis Franz' backside until 10:45 at night, because the federal government deemed it was dangerous until 10:45. Yet gambling every moment of every day when we know children are watching Congress can most certainly address that. And that's part of what my work at Northeastern and the work I'm privileged to do with Dick and Mark is all about

Steve Martorano
Dick Dennard and Mark Gottlieb from Northeastern University and Harry Levant. Thank you, guys. I am pleased and honored to have you on the show. I think you're doing absolutely important work. We like to talk about this podcast as a podcast about everything because everything affects our behavioral health. And nothing in my recent experience is as pervasive and insidious as this ls move to legalize gambling and the unholy alliance of the people that are lined up to make sure it's a big, big deal. I would urge everybody who has a modem and a phone to stop gambling for a couple of minutes and check these fellas out. They're going to have an absolutely unprecedented webinar. The Dangerous Myth of Responsible Gambling. March 15. Tomorrow.

Mark Gottlieb
It's free, by the way, Steve,

Harry Levant
You can't lose anything.

Steve Martorano
Free is a great marketing expression of our age.

Harry Levant
There will be no wagering. There'll be no wagering during the webinar.

Steve Martorano
Consider it a course that you can audit from these two guys that would otherwise cost you a lot of money to go to their classes. Anyway and so from one o'clock until three Eastern Time, that's we give you the I guess it's been Greenwich time because you have an international cast of experts on the webinar. I urge everybody to do that. Dick and Mark, and Harry. Thanks so much. I hate to use a bed-betting pun, but I bet this isn't the last time we talk about this.

Mark Gottlieb
Thanks, Steve.

Harry Levant
Thanks.

Steve Martorano
Thanks, guys. And thank you all for your time. And don't forget to you know, hit the buttons and like us, and check out the webinar. Check us next time on the Behavioral Corner. Take care. Bye bye.

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