Iceland review - 2019, Page 32

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Iceland Review
It’s Friday night in downtown Reykjavík and
Mónakó’s regulars are out in force. The sign on
the outside of the drab green and red building
reads Casino Club Bar, but what’s inside doesn’t
have much in common with the glamourous ideal
of the casino. Or Monaco for that matter. Casinos
are illegal in Iceland. But slot machines aren’t, and
Mónakó is filled to the brim with the kaleidoscopic
technicolour and mechanical sound of the machines.
The profits get split between Mónakó, the Icelandic
Red Cross, the Icelandic Association for Search and
Rescue, and SÁÁ, the National Centre of Addiction
Medicine. Welcome to the hypocritical world of
Icelandic gambling.
Slotting right in
The Icelandic word for casino is spilavíti. Gambling
hell. That linguistic nugget should give you an idea
of the puritan attitude towards gambling and other
vices. There are laws in place which restrict access
to behaviour such as gambling, drinking, and smok-
ing. Alcohol and cigarettes are heavily taxed and
advertising such products is illegal. Even pornog-
raphy is technically illegal. Another example of the
prescriptive attitude of regulations is that, until this
June, any form of lottery and bingo was not allowed
on Christian holidays.
There are two companies with a permit to run
electronic gambling machines in Iceland. One is
Íslandsspil, owned by the aforementioned trio of
institutions. The other is the Icelandic University
Lottery, run by the University of Iceland, a public
institution. Slot machines have been legal since
1993. They are ubiquitous in pubs, corner stores,
traffic centres, gas stations, and restaurants. Today
there are 970 slot machines in the country, each
running a profit of ISK 2,955,000 ($24,100/€21,900)
per year for these institutions. This money comes
directly out of the pockets of heavy users.
Betting on rehab
“Icelanders trust and rely on SÁÁ”, states the
Íslandsspil website. The addiction medicine centre
is an NGO, only partially funded by the government
despite being integrated into the national health-
care system. Among their programs, SÁÁ offers
extensive rehab services for gambling addicts.
You could call it a sensible solution that gambling
addicts essentially self-fund their healthcare, but
it’s also hypocritical that active gambling addicts
are funding rehabilitation for recovering ones.
Under the current law, no private enterprises
are allowed to run gambling services in Iceland.
This ensures that the industry’s profits go to a good
cause. If gambling regulations were loosened, the
money funnelled to health, safety, and education
would be going into the hands of others. And it’s not
clear where the money needed to run these institu-
tions would come from, if not from this source. In a
small economy, tax funds can be hard to come by.
A safe bet
In addition to slot machines, the legal forms of gam-
bling in Iceland are the lottery, scratch cards, bingo,
sports betting, and tombola – but again, only if the
profits go to the right cause. The licences to operate
any of these forms of gambling are handed out by
the District Commissioner, and a prerequisite is that
the profits are used for the public benefit. That can
be anything from social issues, nursing and care,
cultural issues, sports, and charity, to international
humanitarian work. The regulations are strict,
requiring the proportion of the value of prizes to the
total sales of tickets in a lottery to be a minimum of
16.67%. The regulations for the slot machines are
stricter still, stating that an 89% win percentage
must be in place for players. Íslandsspil, for one, vol-
untarily has that number at 92%. That doesn’t stop
the majority of players from losing money, however.
Gambling it all away
Slot machines have been christened the “crack
cocaine of gambling” by many. Some even call them
the heart of the casino. Studies suggest the three
main factors of speed, feedback, and imagined
control are the main culprits. Each bet only takes
seconds, players frequently win, althoguh usually
amounts smaller than the one wagered, and the
machines are designed to let the user feel as if they
have the control.
Gambling addiction is classified as a compulsive
illness by the American Psychiatric Association.
Studies from the University of Iceland show that
0.7% of Icelanders, more than 2,500, play the slot
machines at least once a week, and that 0.8% of the
population is battling a gambling addiction. A 2011
study revealed that 76% of adult Icelanders took
part in some form of gambling at least once per
month.
In Norway, slot machines are banned. The
machines used to be state run, but research showed
that an increased number of slot machines not only
produced more income, but also more addicts. The
number of compulsive gamblers in the country grew
in accordance with the increasing number of slot
machines. Despite the monetary profits, high rates
of gambling addiction come at a huge cost to society,
as individuals can no longer contribute to their full
capabilities, as well as placing a burden on the public
healthcare system.
The hypocrisy of the Icelandic system has
been pointed out a few times in the past. In 2016,