WV Responsible Gaming and Research Act passes House Judiciary Committee
PRINCETON, WV (WVNS) – Gambling is all about the numbers, and a new law under consideration in the West Virginia House will shed light on the numbers related to gambling in the state.
On Friday, February 23rd, the West Virginia Responsible Gaming and Research Act passed the House Judiciary Committee.
Speaker of the House Roger Hanshaw is the bill’s primary sponsor and he President of the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States, Representative Shawn Fluharty is also a proponent of the bill.
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The Responsible Gaming and Research Act (RGRA) will require West Virginia’s gambling operators and intermediaries to provide West Virginia University with anonymized data on its gamblers. WVU will share the data with the State Lottery Commission’s Department of Human Services. Both institutions will use the data in research to help better understand problematic and addictive gambling behaviors and inform future legislation on how to make gambling safer.
Sheila Moran, Director of Marketing and Communication for behavioral health organization, First Choice Services, says this type of research is overdue.
“The last national major prevalence study was done in 1999. Now, think about how much gambling has expanded in since 1999. Quite a bit. So that’s the best statistics we have. There’s never been a prevalence study done here in West Virginia.”
Moran said another important aspect of the data used in the research is how comprehensive it will be.
“Most of the research that we have in the gambling addiction field is based on self-report, and we all know that sometimes people aren’t forthright in self-report. You know, they’ve done studies on things like alcohol consumption and physical activity and church attendance. And when they compare what people say they do versus what the data shows, there is a discrepancy. So no surprise. Same thing with gambling, especially problem gambling. Yeah. Therefore, I think it would be very interesting to have the actual data from how people are truly behaving online, how they’re spending money. We know that there are certain tells in the data that will indicate problem gambling, and we would really like to know how much of that we’re dealing with that would help us, help us know how to target our efforts.”
The RGRA makes the privacy of gamblers a main focal point. Along with other features to maintain privacy, data provided through the Act, will not be considered a public record, ensuring it will not be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.
The Responsible Gaming and Research Act will now be considered by the West Virginia House.
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