When Dave Nangle, a former veteran Massachusetts legislator, talks about playing dependancy, individuals ought to pay attention.
He is aware of what he’s speaking about. He has been by it, together with serving jail time due to a playing dependancy.
“My dependancy consumed my life,” the 64-year Nangle mentioned. “It led me to betray people who I liked, make deeply regrettable choices, and in the end 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 expenses of misuse of marketing campaign funds to pay for his playing dependancy, amongst different issues.
He was sentenced to fifteen months in jail. He served six months and was launched to residence confinement throughout the Covid epidemic. He wrecked his household life, misplaced his job, misplaced his cash and misplaced his repute.
Nangle, who has rebuilt his life and now lectures and counsels on playing dependancy, 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 position 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 dying of Sen. Edward J. Kennedy. A particular main shall be held March 3.
He had a great probability of profitable, contemplating it will have been a three-way main pitting the nonetheless well-liked and politically skilled Nangle in opposition to two Lowell state representatives, Vanna Howard and Rodney Elliot.
However his coronary heart was elsewhere.
“As I mentioned 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 individuals, from the trail I walked for forty years.”
And the easiest way to do it was to personally assist individuals with dependancy, whether or not it’s from playing, alcoholism or drug abuse.
He did so by first working with The Bridge Membership of Larger Lowell, a non-profit serving addicted individuals, changing into an authorized dependancy 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 mobile phone playing or so referred to as “I Gaming.”
The laws, in an enhancement of legalized playing, would permit gamblers, or anybody else fascinated with probability betting, to gamble by mobile phone on all of the playing video games supplied 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, based on Nangle, “engineered to be addictive.”
Higher nonetheless, since there are not any working hours as in a on line casino, you would use it to gamble on the kitchen desk twenty-four hours a day, seven days per week, which is an open invitation to dependancy, particularly for younger individuals.
Neither is there any human interplay with mobile phone playing, simply algorithms to maintain on playing.
“How can we ban cell telephones in colleges on Monday and legalize playing on them by Tuesday?” Nangle requested. “We don’t want to show each mobile phone right into a on line casino.”
He mentioned, “There isn’t any Narcan for a playing dependancy. No emergency antidote. When somebody overdoses on opioids we will administer Narcan and save a life. However when somebody spirals into playing dependancy, there isn’t a such rescue.
“The harm is sluggish, silent and infrequently irreversible. It’s bankruptcies, misplaced houses, damaged marriages, and youngsters questioning what occurred to their faculty fund.”
Because of individuals like Nangle, the invoice will most likely be killed.
However don’t guess on it.
Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas might be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com
