Coppins’s story is one anecdote showing how the gambling epidemic is no longer a far-off issue contained to casinos. It has invaded our smartphones, our living rooms, and our families.
It is what Les Bernal, National Director for Stop Predatory Gambling, calls “America’s most neglected major problem.”
For Christian communicators who steward airwaves, pulpits, and various digital platforms to proclaim truth, this is not just a secular, cultural phenomenon. Recent data shows the crisis reaches into the pews. Lifeway Research found that while 55% of Protestant pastors view sports betting as morally wrong, many congregations receive little teaching or support on the issue.
Effectively equipping audiences and shepherding congregations begins with understanding the industry’s history—specifically how, over the last few decades, various laws have remapped the landscape.
For most of American history, gambling was highly restricted and carried a heavy social stigma. In 1992, Congress passed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) to federally prohibit state-sanctioned sports gambling. But when New Jersey passed the 2012 Sports Wagering Act aiming to boost its flagging economy, the wall began to crack.
The legal battle culminated in the watershed 2018 Supreme Court case, Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association. In a 6-3 decision striking down PASPA, Justice Samuel Alito rooted the core reasoning in the Tenth Amendment’s anti-commandeering doctrine, writing: “Congress may not simply ‘commandeer the legislative process of the States by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program.’”
The ruling effectively handed the keys to the states, and virtually overnight, an ancient vice became as frictionless as checking the weather.
Since then, politicians from both parties have eagerly cashed in on the industry’s explosive growth. A recent Washington Examiner investigation revealed that vulnerable congressional members rely heavily on gambling industry donations.
In return, these politicians simultaneously push legislation to allow gamblers to deduct 100% of their losses. This is a massive priority for the casino operators, since the alternative would disincentivize people from playing.
Think about it this way. Imagine you win $10,000 on a sports betting app, but by the end of the month, you also lose $10,000. In reality, you broke even and didn’t actually profit. If tax laws only let you deduct 90% of your gambling losses, you are only allowed to write off $9,000. This means the IRS will still tax you on that remaining $1,000, treating it as “phantom” or “ghost” income, even though you don’t actually have that cash on hand.
The hypocrisy runs deep across the aisle. Texas Democratic state representative James Talarico has built a reputation on progressive Christian values, yet his campaign accepted $59,000 from a casino-backed PAC while he aggressively supported the expansion of legal gambling.
Les Bernal’s organization, Stop Predatory Gambling, is a national nonprofit dedicated to revealing the truth behind gambling operators and advocating for their victims.
Bernal is careful to make a distinction between social gambling (like a Friday night poker game with neighbors or a Super Bowl office pool) and predatory gambling, which is where the crisis lies. Predatory gambling happens when state governments partner with powerful corporate operators to run commercialized gambling as a business.
“Predatory gambling is the ultimate big government program. I mean, it’s only legal if you partner with the state,” Bernal said.
Because it is a business mathematically stacked against the consumer, it is essentially a form of financial fraud, Bernal says.
For Bernal, this unholy alliance between the state and casino operators has shifted the values of our nation. Over the last 30 years, commercialized gambling has moved from the fringes of society to become the “centerpiece in the public square,” playing entirely on the worship and love of money.
Instead of encouraging citizens to invest in savings bonds as in days past, the state now pushes the illusion of instant riches.
“What else do we advertise to the American people? Almost nothing,” Bernal points out. “The marketing and advertising of commercialized gambling today … that is the public voice of American government to most citizens.”
Because the business model relies on getting citizens to play until their money is completely gone, gambling operators are inflicting life-changing harm on families. Areas of societal decay are directly linked to this industry, such as domestic violence, higher divorce rates, debt, substance abuse, anxiety, and depression.
In 2023, the Indian Journal of Psychiatry rounded up eight U.S. studies that reported those with gambling addiction “had the highest suicide rate of any addiction disorder,” with one in five gambling addiction patients having attempted suicide.
Bernal points out that this is the only industry in America that does not have to pay for the massive harms it inflicts.
“You, the taxpayer, are picking up the tab for all of the incredible financial and social harms that this industry leaves in its wake,” he said. Taxpayers fund the housing subsidies, the food stamps, and the unpaid emergency room bills when families are bankrupted by state-sponsored apps and scratch-offs.
Bernal underscored what he calls the “big con” at the center of it all. Politicians from both sides of the aisle, from New York to Wisconsin, are actively telling their constituents that expanding gambling is a “good thing” that will fund education and lower taxes.
Bernal hopes to spark a wakeup call, not only for citizens, but also for those entrusted with the Christian public voice. The fact that a state actively sells $100 scratch-off tickets to people making minimum wage “should be intolerable” to us, Bernal says. He urges Christian leaders to elevate this crisis, declaring that “the time has come where it needs to be in your top five issues.”
Opposition to predatory gambling bridges the political divide and can thus expand listening audiences and bring people together to protect their communities.
Someone might ask, “Gambling apps are already available to every smartphone. How can we put the toothpaste back in the tube?” His answer? If a brand of toothpaste was causing life-changing financial harm, destroying children, and pushing people to suicide, we would pull it from the shelves immediately.
We would take it off the market.
And the solution for gambling is the same.
“This is a symbol of the breakdown of America,” Bernal concluded. “We need to get state governments out of the gambling business and back on the side of the American people.”