When Dave Nangle, a former veteran Massachusetts legislator, talks about playing habit, folks ought to pay attention.
He is aware of what he’s speaking about. He has been by way of it, together with serving jail time due to a playing habit.
“My habit consumed my life,” the 64-year Nangle stated. “It led me to betray those who I cherished, make deeply regrettable choices, and finally serve time in federal jail.”
The previous Lowell legislator served 22 years within the Home earlier than he was arrested in 2022 and pled responsible to costs of misuse of marketing campaign funds to pay for his playing habit, amongst different issues.
He was sentenced to fifteen months in jail. He served six months and was launched to house confinement throughout the Covid epidemic. He wrecked his household life, misplaced his job, misplaced his cash and misplaced his fame.
Nangle, who has rebuilt his life and now lectures and counsels on playing habit, made his remarks earlier than the legislative Committee on Financial Improvement and Rising Applied sciences Thursday on Beacon Hill.
The committee had a number of playing payments earlier than it, together with one permitting on line casino playing on cell telephones.
Whereas Nangle did return to the State Home, it was not within the function his loyal supporters hoped for. They needed him to run for the state Senate to fill the Lowell senate seat made vacant by the October loss of life of Sen. Edward J. Kennedy. A particular main will likely be held March 3.
He had a great likelihood of successful, contemplating it will have been a three-way main pitting the nonetheless fashionable and politically skilled Nangle in opposition to two Lowell state representatives, Vanna Howard and Rodney Elliot.
However his coronary heart was elsewhere.
“As I stated at my sentencing,” he testified, “ I informed the choose that after my case was behind me. I’d dedicate myself to defending others, particularly younger folks, from the trail I walked for forty years.”
And one of the simplest ways to do it was to personally assist folks with habit, whether or not it’s from playing, alcoholism or drug abuse.
He did so by first working with The Bridge Membership of Better Lowell, a non-profit serving addicted folks, changing into an authorized habit restoration coach (CARC), and dealing with the Massachusetts Counsel on Gaming and Well being, one other nonprofit devoted to serving to addicted gamblers, as a peer specialist.
Nangle additionally represented the anti-gambling group Cease Web Playing in Massachusetts which can also be against the legalization of cellphone playing or so referred to as “I Gaming.”
The laws, in an enhancement of legalized playing, would enable gamblers, or anybody else excited about likelihood betting, to gamble by cellphone on all of the playing video games provided by a on line casino.
These embrace, amongst different issues, video games of poker, blackjack, roulette and craps, or cube. It might be like having a brick-and-mortar on line casino in your pocket and, in keeping with Nangle, “engineered to be addictive.”
Higher nonetheless, since there aren’t any working hours as in a on line casino, you possibly can use it to gamble on the kitchen desk twenty-four hours a day, seven days per week, which is an open invitation to habit, particularly for younger folks.
Neither is there any human interplay with cellphone playing, simply algorithms to maintain on playing.
“How can we ban cell telephones in faculties on Monday and legalize playing on them by Tuesday?” Nangle requested. “We don’t want to show each cellphone right into a on line casino.”
He stated, “There isn’t any Narcan for a playing habit. No emergency antidote. When somebody overdoses on opioids we will administer Narcan and save a life. However when somebody spirals into playing habit, there isn’t a such rescue.
“The harm is sluggish, silent and sometimes irreversible. It’s bankruptcies, misplaced houses, damaged marriages, and youngsters questioning what occurred to their faculty fund.”
Because of folks like Nangle, the invoice will in all probability be killed.
However don’t wager on it.
Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas might be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com
