Tourism and Gaming Working Group

Aloha and welcome to a tourism and gaming working group. Today is Thursday, September 17, and this is our 10AM agenda, and we're in Conference Room 229. This informational briefing is being streamed live on YouTube. Please note that no testimony will be accepted at this time. So, without further ado, I wanna go ahead and start intro. everybody would Introduce themselves.

I'll start from left to right with Stanford Carr.

Stanford Carr, Aloha, Halawa District Partners.

Co-Chair, Gregory Iligan, State Rep.

Myself, Senator Lynn DeCoite, Co-Chair, Senate District Seven.

Good morning, everyone. Jimmy Tokioka, VP of director.

Thank you.

We can go to Zoom.

Jennifer Anderson, State Government Affairs, director for FanDuel.

Hi. This is Beau Bernhard from UNLV.

Well, you look hot out there, Beau.

I'm outdoors. Yes.

I'm wishing I was in Hawaii.

Good morning. Michelle Puhl from the Attorney General's Office.

Hi. Paul Anderson, Board Gaming.

Gary Suganuma for Department of Taxation.

Good morning. It's Alan Feldman from UNLV.

Hey. Good morning. Kent Caputo with Marnell Companies and Marnell Gaming.

Aloha, Kaka Yaka. Brandon Makawava, Nation of Hawaii.

Hello, Kaka Yaka. Tyler Williams, Hawaiian Council.

I think who get is that Department of Health? Sorry. Okay. Services? Did did everybody get a chance to introduce themselves?

It's hard for us to see the, yeah.

I don't know if you wanted us to. We're speaking this Kim Freudenberg from parents setting together. My son, Kurt, is here as well.

Thanks, Kim. And then, I think, Timothy, we have you in the top left.

Yeah. Tim Fong, professor of psychiatry, UCLA Gambling Studies Program.

Okay. Thank you, everybody. So I just wanted to, first of all, thank all of you guys for coming today and in Zoom land. I had to make some changes in the agenda. Well, actually, the agenda is set, but we have three speakers today in regards to, gaming gaming addiction.

And let me introduce our first introducer, that's gonna speak. Doctor Timothy Fong is a professor of psychiatry at the, at the Semmel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program. The program examines the underlying causes and clinical characteristics of gambling disorder with the goal of developing effective, evidence-based treatment strategies. Doctor

Fong completed his undergraduate and medical education at Northwestern University in Chicago before completing his residency in adult general psychiatry at UCLA in 2002. He subsequently became the first accredited addiction psychiatry fellow at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, completing his fellowship from 2002 to 2004. In addition to his work in gambling research and treatment. Doctor Fong serves as director of the UCLA Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship, a one-year program providing advanced clinical and research training in addiction psychiatry.

Is also a founding member of the UCLA Cannabis Research Initiative, a multidisciplinary effort focused on examining the efforts of cannabis on physical and mental health.

His work spans addiction psychiatry, gambling disorder, clinical research, and the development of evidence-based approaches to treatment and recovery. And I just like to say, you know, I had the opportunity to listen to, to Doctor Fong as well as the next two speakers, at. And, and I found that this was probably one of the most impactful presentations I've seen yet that addresses on gaming, gaming addiction. So without further ado, I wanted to go ahead because I know you have to leave, Doctor Fong.

So if you'd like to get started and thank you for joining us.

Yes. And, and thank you for having me appear here, and I wanna thank Kim and Kerr for also coming in. And some old friends of mine, Alan and Beau, who I've known for twenty-five-plus years. And, obviously, I'm a, I'm wearing my UCLA Hawaii shirt. I have this.

I, I wear it. It's in my rotation, so I think I'm hopefully doing your state some justice there. So what I have here for today is just a very brief presentation on what we're seeing, what I'm seeing as an addiction psychiatrist, when it comes to gambling behaviors and impact on the public health. I've been studying gambling behavior since 2005. By trade here at UCLA, I really do four things. I provide clinical care for men and women with gambling disorders as well as their families.

We do research on studying the impact of gambling on public health. We do teaching for our medical students and residents on how to treat gambling addiction. And then lastly, we do a lot of what we're doing here today, which is just basically community engagement, trying to understand how do we find common solutions to complex problems. So that's my focus here. I'm kind of a common-sense, practical physician.

I know you've had about seven or eight of these hearings already and had some really wonderful speakers. So I don't wanna be too redundant. I just wanna provide my side of things and opinions of how I view certain things. This is it. Obviously, you know about this.

You've seen this. I use this slide when I do teaching with medical students, residents, and fellows to highlight how gambling in America and in the world is twenty-four seven. This isn't meant to call, oh my gosh. This is terrible. This is awful.

It's just the state of the way things are. I'm a Generation X psychiatrist. It means things have changed so much. We have to really look at a world that is seamless, frictionless, twenty-four seven, for better or for worse. When I do this training with physicians, I say, what do you think is happening here to this man?

Does it look like he's having fun? Is this the intended plan of what we want from gambling? Do we want people to do this as recreation? Is this something we want from a public health standpoint? It's a really, really, you know, powerful image that speaks to, again, where gambling is.

As you all know and you've heard many speakers talk about the expansion of gambling in 2026, I wanna focus on my main point here, which isn't so much of how sports betting has expanded or the in person casinos or the brand new forms of different forms of gaming and gambling that are available. But on this last point here, which is the normalization and promotion of gambling as a form of entertainment and wealth generation. This, I think, all of us would agree.

Gambling, in whatever shape and format you look at it, is supposed to be about bringing people together. It's supposed to be about recognizing a form of entertainment in my mind.

Where I get concerned has been what we've seen over the last six or seven years, where it becomes so normalized and embedded that it creates a false notion of what this activity really is. As an example, we've seen a survey just released last month talking about a lot of Gen Z who now turn and recognize gambling as a form of investment and not parking it in tried-and-true financial institutions. That's a concern to me.

When I have my 16-year-old son and I talk to his friends and they say, no. Gambling is a job.

Gambling is a side hustle. Gambling is a reliable way of making money. I know that we've missed the mark in educating the public about what gambling's risks are and are not. By normalizing the activity from the lens of an addiction psychiatrist, you then will decrease the perception of harm. We've learned that story from cannabis.

When you expand cannibial, cannabis and you say it's no big deal, it's just weed, you're gonna get more people started, started at a younger age and being less concerned about the risk and danger of that. No one is saying that fentanyl is normal and safe. We fear fentanyl. So the impact of rapid expansion of gambling has to be normalized and, in some ways, reduce the fear of its potential harm.

We don't wanna be fear-mongering, but we wanna recognize that there are risks of gambling as it currently is developed.

As a reminder for folks, gambling disorder, that's the language we want. We do not wanna use stigmatizing language, gambling addict, compulsive gambler, degenerate gambler. Right? This is all language that doesn't help. This is a language that drives stigma and shame and false understanding of what this is.

For the vast majority of people who do gamble on a regular basis, they don't incur long lasting damage. For about one to four percent of the population, they develop this condition of gambling addiction, more formally known as gambling disorder. I laid out the criteria there, nine separate criteria. And for people to imagine what is it like to have and be in the throes of a gambling disorder, I swear, Curtin came and described that.

But for me, my patients, when they say, oh, I cannot stop thinking about gambling all day.

I when I cannot gamble, I had the shakes and withdrawal and sweatiness. I have intense preoccupation to the point where I can't function. That tells me that is a different form of gambling behavior than recreational. That is one of the addiction. The public health impact of gambling disorder is very, very interesting.

And you heard testimonies over the last six or seven meeting. I'll distill it down very simply. In America, we estimate it's about two to four percent of the general population walking around America. That's about the same prevalence rate as bipolar disorder and other severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia. We also know there's about four percent behind that, or in addition to that, there are probably already incurring some harm and damage from gambling, but they're not fully diagnosed.

So that's a pretty significant chunk of the public. I was doing a, a lecture this morning to our residents, and someone said, hey, Doctor Fong. If someone goes out and they gamble one time, and they lose $5,000, and that $5,000 really impact their lives, is that a person with gambling addiction? I said to them, you know what? It's actually not, because they only went one time.

Gambling disorder is continued, ongoing, repeated use, but also highlights that just a single instance of gambling activity can create long-lasting damage. Just like one night of using substances like cocaine or methamphetamine can leave a long-lasting impact. Let's say they get in a car accident or, or, or damage. So sometimes I think we forget that gambling harm isn't just related to gambling addiction. It can come from a single unintended night or day of gambling activity.

Unfortunately and/or fortunately, we wanna think about this. The impact of gambling addiction, I think of it as body, brain, mind, spirit, and wallet, but particularly on individuals, on families, and then on communities. And as you think about what this would look like in the islands of Hawaii, I was thinking about this, how this would profoundly impact. You have variety of impacts on the individual. Things that are so stark: suicide, emotional pain on a lethal level, physical pain, stress-related illnesses.

There was a report that just came out this week highlighting in Canada that as we've seen expansion of gambling, there's been an increase in the number of men and women going to emergency room visits because of gambling related activities. That means suicides, unintentional overdoses, car accidents, back injuries because they're not exercising. So we're starting to see impact there. Obviously, the public health impact of gambling on families is profound. Kim and Kurt will describe that firsthand through their journey and lived experiences.

But the last thing I wanna highlight is the impact on communities. We at UCLA have been looking at how does gambling impact Asian American Pacific Islander communities for the last twenty years. Some of our work has uncovered higher-than-expected rates of gambling addiction in Asian communities. San Francisco Chinatown, Cerritos, California, Chinatown in Chicago. We've gone on the buses that take people from wherever into the casinos.

They're predominantly Asian American and recognize that gambling addiction rates in those buses are as high as thirty percent. So that's a huge area, and I know you're thinking about that in your own Hawaiian communities. And we think about not just brick-and-mortar impact, but mobile gaming, how that can also impact various communities. One of the problems on our back end is: what are we gonna do about it? How do we do better?

The problem with treatment for gambling disorder is that we have a very small dedicated workforce: very few physicians, very few therapists that are especially trained. That workforce is growing, but we don't have a lot of funds. As you all know, from a federal source of funding to support this work is essentially nonexistent. Right now, there is zero NIH-funded trials or research things looking at gambling behavior related to gambling addiction.

So this battle, right, between state funding and federal funding when it comes to support gambling is a profoundly important one.

Here in California, to give you all a sense of what we have, we have a $9,000,000 a year state state treatment program for gambling disorder in California. That's pretty good. 9,000,000 sounds like a lot, but that budget was 9,000,000 back in 2009. It is now 9,000,000 in 2026. And, clearly, there's a lot more expansion in gambling activity in the last seventeen years.

We also know that insurances are very confusing as to what they will pay for gambling disorder treatment, with some insurances, frankly, straight up saying, no. We will not pay for services. We have state and Medicaid policies that are uncertain about whether they will reimburse people for delivery of services related to gambling. And the biggest one here in the last dot, the tiniest percentage of patients and clients seek treatment.

Of all the addictive disorders, by far and away, gambling disorder is the one where clients will seek be the least likely to seek treatment.

Why? Shame, stigma, a false belief that treatment won't work. But just understanding the nature of this condition will tell it to us. When you're in the throes of a gambling disorder, you think gambling is the solution, not the problem. So why would you go see a professional who's gonna tell you not to gamble when, if you just keep working your betting and gambling system, you're gonna get back to even?

This is the hardest part, I think, in the public health impact. If you expand gambling activity in any state or region, there will be more patients with gambling disorder. How are you gonna respond by getting prevention and treatment infrastructure set up? That's what we really want. Okay.

So let me skip that because I really wanna leave time for questions and answering statements. But suffice it to know that right now, in 2026, we have the ability to treat gambling disorder. We have certain medications. We have psychotherapy that works. We have Gamblers Anonymous.

We have a whole host of podcasts and, and apps and really interesting newer technologies that work. But you need infrastructure, you need support, and you need to get therapists trained. So many therapists have had zero training in gambling disorder. Many of them don't know the difference between a parlay or, you know, an over/under. Many don't know the difference, literally, between what, you know, a bet or a wager or any of these things are.

Here's a snapshot locally and nationally for us to think about. Again, National Institute of Health, essentially no research dollars going to study this behavior. SAMHSA, our major federal support for substance use disorders treatment, very quiet, no initiatives. Again, even from the White House and ONDCP, the Justice, the MAHA Movement, no mention of gambling addiction. We have a National Council on Problem Gambling.

We have an International Council on Responsible Gambling. And we have a wide variety of several academic centers like ourselves and Memphis and Mississippi, East Carolina that are studying gambling but funded predominantly by state resources. You have an amazing university there, University of Hawaii. They have an addiction psychiatry program. They have residents.

They have fellows. This is something my call to you should you move forward with this: that there sets up a local addiction or academic center to study gambling there, in the islands. Alright. So my to-do list is very simple. Encourage, and it doesn't matter whether you're a physician or a therapist or a legislator or you work in nonprofit, is to just start talking about gambling wherever we go, in health care, in screenings we do for domestic violence.

One of the first key thing I love to see states do is that inside your suicide help lines, to have those technicians and those callers be educated about screening, about gambling, and local resources for gambling. We need to document cases and stories that happen related to gambling so people understand its true public health impact. And really look at the prevention, advocacy, and research.

If you expand gambling in any state, if you expand prevention, advocacy, research, and treatment, you're gonna have a chance of suppressing and reducing the gambling addiction spread. You look at other states in America like Oklahoma or Illinois, their prevalence rates are four percent, six percent.

They also have infrastructure to try and provide treatment and prevention at earlier stage. I encourage everyone on the call, if you're not familiar with these various products, to really just take a look at them and understand how innovative they are and understand how impressive they can be, and how quickly they change. But frankly, for me, I just learned from my clients. I learned from our patients in terms of what they go through, what families go through, and we have a lot of work ahead of ourselves.

One of the other hats I wear is, I am president of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry, and I've been trying to marshal a number of other professional societies, including our American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association, and American Society of Addiction Medicine, to get together to train more physicians about gambling disorder.

One of the things, if you expand gambling, is to in Hawaii is to really look at your medical school and say, we really wanna make sure that every single Hawaii medical student gets some training on gambling behavior, gets some better equipped to understand the impact of gambling on, on themselves. Another example, in terms of initiative, that I'd like to see is really the financial literacy training for high school students.

In California, we now have dedicated six months that's mandated financial literacy training before high school students graduate. We don't teach them drivers that anymore. They don't learn how to drive, but they get state mandated and learn about finance.

I think that's a tremendous opportunity to really get the young people correct information about gambling. And I'll end on this one part before we other aspects of it. We know that there are some four basic pillars that will keep people in the lane of responsible, healthy, positive gambling that doesn't get them into addiction.

It's going to be things like understanding how gambling apps work, being very honest about what gambling can do for you, having a firm budget that you stick with having a degree of personal responsibility. These are things that we recognize will keep people away from gambling addiction.

At the same time, we have to have better strategies than when people start to have the early signal of gambling problems. How can they access prevention, treatment, educational resources at the soon, at the earliest time? By the time people come see someone like myself, things are extreme. Things are severe, and that's the message that we really don't want to see happen. So I'll hold there.

I wanna make sure we have plenty of time for Kim and Kirk. And hopefully, I can answer some questions here on today's hearing. If not, you can reach out to me by phone or by email. I'm happy to talk to anybody on the record, off the record, on the beach, off the beach, anytime, any place, anywhere. So I'll, I'll that's I'll hold right there.

I'll turn it back over to the Chairwoman.

Thank you, Doctor Fong. What a great presentation. I'm gonna go to Zoom because I do know we have people that are gonna have to leave. I'm not sure if, if Paul, Paul, are you still on, Anderson? Okay.

He's not. Anyway, let's go to Zoom. Anyone with questions for Doctor Fong?

Nope. Sorry. I'm here.

Hey. What happened to the talks?

No. Yeah. It's, it's coming. It's coming.

It's like you changed shirts, Paul. I well,

I'm in the process here. So yes.

I, do you have any questions for Doctor Fong?

Yeah. I, I don't have any direct questions other than, he he mentioned, I guess I do have a direct question. One, I wanna say thank you. I think this was a great presentation, and I, I saw your, your next presenter at Nickel G's as well, and I, I appreciate you bringing them because I think this is an important segment of the conversation that needs to happen.

I I did wanna ask about any successes in other states about having insurance cover the costs of rehabilitation and where, you know, you've mentioned, I think California was at 9,000,000, and that was a couple decades ago and still at $9,000,000. Does that mean it's underfunded or is insurance covering the gap, or, or where should we in Hawaii look at to make sure we get it right?

So, number one, there needs to be, in my mind, a dedicated reserve of funds that are generated by gambling revenue that's set aside specifically for prevention, education, treatment, and research. The reason being that many people with gambling disorder do not have health insurance or they have a health insurance that's lacking. Number two, holding private insurance companies accountable to say, hey. This is an addiction. This needs the standard of mental health parity.

And if a family wants to receive care, then you have a duty as an insurance company to reimburse providers and clinicians at the same rate as, say, depression or anxiety or substance use disorder. Thirdly, again, I think we're getting more and more insurance companies that are willing. But what you don't have is a lot of reports of gambling disorder inside the insurance group.

For instance, there was a survey done a couple years ago where a health insurance company looked at all the claims they have and said, look. We barely have any gambling disorder.

It's less than 0.0001%. So why are you getting up on our grill about doing this? Because no one's coming into care. Well, no one was coming into care because no one was asking, no one was screening, and no one was presenting because the nature of gambling disorder isn't, oh my gosh. I'm gonna pick up a phone and call my psychiatrist on Monday because I'm hurting.

If you wake up Monday and you can't breathe, your chest hurts, your mouth hurts, you are on that phone instantly to a healthcare person. That's not the case with the nature of gambling disorder. People don't seek help. We can reverse that by doing a lot better at the front end by encouraging health insurance companies, for instance, to pay for screening or for insurance companies to say, hey.

We now offer coverage for gambling addiction, and we will pay you at market rate if you get the proper training.

So there's a million of these things. But to do it right, I think the state's gotta have state-funded funding that they can control on their own to get it to local communities as the state sees fit, not based on some other bureaucrat telling them they have to do it. And number 2, advocating at a federal level to say we need more protected federal dollars that specifically go for treating gambling disorder and co occurring disorder.

So I could go all day, but that's my main ask and say because, again, compared to SUD, alcohol and drugs, we are about one we're about 10% of the funding that we know that we have. We in California will run out and exhaust our state-funded treatments by Christmas.

So that means six months, we're we got nothing left in the in the till. So we were very much underfunded here in the state state of California.

And, Doctor, is there a state that you would replicate if, if you had the opportunity?

Well, there's several. Yeah. I mean, there's several.

I mean, obviously, Massachusetts has a lot, a lot of resources for prevention and research, but they haven't invested in treatment infrastructure. I think our state for treatment infrastructure is second to none. We have it all. Residential, partial, 115 licensed therapists. We have telehealth options.

We have electronic options. So we've been able to do that for about under $4,000,000 per year. So we have all those options. Other states, you know, Oklahoma, but Illinois is building out more. Illinois does a phenomenal job for advertising and education, but their treatment infrastructure, I think, lags a little bit.

So, there's some other states that, Oregon, I would point to as a tremendous, they've been doing this for forty years as a state that has all those different levels of care.

I appreciate that. Madam Chair, thanks for the questions. It seems like we just need to make sure that we're removing any friction, or as much friction as possible, to get to treatment. And, yeah, important combo. Thank you.

I'll leave, I'll leave you to one setup that we have here in our California. It goes from our Office of Problem Gambling funding directly to our state university here at UCLA. So it's not mired in contracts or grantsmanship. We're all the state of California, and we work in partnership with the state of California to make sure our needs are met. So we at UCLA can be the administrators of the state treatment program.

We ensure it works. We can evaluate it. We know our state, so we're not losing any money to, you know, middlemen, you know, or bureaucratic losses. Every dollar, we're able to maximize for treatment services.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else on Zoom have a question for Doctor Fong?

Oh, yes. I, I, I do. I'm Jim Dillon. I'm from DOH and adult mental health. Also a graduate of the UCLA Child Fellowship Program.

Go broom. I have a, I have a zillion questions, but let me just try and focus them. First, do you oppose legalization? And to what extent, whether you do or no, does legalization offset some of the illegal gambling that is highly prevalent in our state?

Where's Beau when you need him? So here's what I would say. I, I don't like to use the word opposed. I'm in favor of what I call science-based legislation. We know some very facts.

Is that when you expand gambling, gambling expands. You can never, in my opinion, shut down unregulated gambling. It's very, very difficult to do. However, if it's already there, if you impose proper regulation, you can do so much more good than harm. If you don't do anything, this thing is still going to, you know, be there.

We learned this lesson from cannabis in California. We legalized cannabis, and there's half the people who say this is terrible, you know, ten years later. The other half are saying, look at all the money we've been able to raise and use for other good things. So I don't oppose legalization. I don't promote legalization.

I, I'm, I'm for how, how do we do this in healthier ways to get resources out there? The truth of the matter is very clear. If you expand legalized forms of gambling, you don't shut down unregulated. At the same time, if you expand legalized gambling that your state can return and capture revenue that can be then used for public health good, that I think is super, super critical. I'll leave you to that.

Oh, a second question has to do with identification of gambling disorder in the population. One thing we know about it is it's highly comorbid with substance use problems. And one place obviously to look for them is in populations with substance use. I'd like you to tell me if that's a fair surmise.

And the other thing is, when we look at it in the general population or through primary care physicians, we may not come up with much, but we could just sit in the casinos, and, and we'll know who, who most of them are.

Could you comment on the difficulty of screening and, and finally, the effectiveness of the treatment that, that you render and how well that will generalize to people who now are reluctant to seek treatment.

Yeah. And so here's the thing. We call this the hidden addiction. You can't smell it. You can't taste it.

You can't test for it. But we do know when you actually screen for it, you can get actually accurate responses. We know a few things. We know that in substance use disorder treatment programs, the rate of gambling disorder is anywhere between ten and fifteen percent, so it's much, much higher. In mental health program, it's also ten to fifteen percent much higher.

We know that in primary care clinics, we can see those rates as high as four to eight percent. So, but we don't yet have a standard of care to screen for gambling like we do to screen for suicide or to screen for alcohol. So that's a health care education thing we can do better at. You, you ask, you make the connections, and people will talk. And when you hear Kurt's story, you're gonna see the same thing is that so easy to hide.

But, yet if you have a seasoned clinician experience who can make and connect the dots, that's That's enough to get people talking and wondering. That's number 1. Number 2, on the treatment side, like any other addictive disorder, treatment works. Whether it's alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, nicotine, opiates, we know treatment work when you provide a bio, psychosocial, spiritual treatment approach. When you have all aspects of care: recovery, peer support, residential, aftercare, dual diagnosis.

I view, I got, I got a flame. Can I use that word? I got criticized once for saying, you know, gambling disorder is a mental health disorder. And someone's like, no. It's not.

I said it is. It's a mental health disorder. It's an addictive disorder. All disorders of addiction are essentially mental health disorders. And so we still have a lot of education to do for folks.

Treatment works despite not having being much further behind other lanes of addiction research because it works. You know, it works because the power of therapy, the power of counseling, the power of things that we know to treat the co-occurring disorder. So they're absolutely one of the biggest criticisms that I've had over our own state. We haven't been yet, been able to get into the mental health side as much.

We've been able to do a lot of work with our substance use disorder treatment programs, but getting into the mental health side is a little trickier.

Why? In California, mental health, substance use disorder funding are completely separate lanes. The two are kind of not really talking, but that's an area of work. Started out in Hawaii. I would start that from the very beginning.

We're gonna get to everybody. Mental health, primary care, SUD, hospitals, social places, whoever wants. Why? Because gambling addiction cuts across every single social institution that we have in our communities.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. I'm gonna take Alan, I, I know you tried to chime in early. I'm gonna take one last question, and then I gotta go to the next presentation.

Not a problem. Thank you very much. Tim, always good seeing you, and I always, always learn from you. You know, it strikes me that normalization can come in a whole lot of different forms. The idea that this is being normalized as a way to make money is clearly a problem.

However, if it's normalized as a risk activity, that can still be entertaining. Right? We go skiing. We do mountain climbing. Some folks do parasailing.

All of these things are entertaining, and they all involve risk. What we're not doing, I, I believe I'm hearing you say, is we're not presenting it in that context and not doing any kind of education among the public to say to folks, the activity is fine. You, you, you should have a good time. However, here are the guardrails.

Very well said. Again, if I had a number 1 laundry list is advertising toward young people. When I look at the gambling ads that are available either on print billboards or online, it celebrates a party atmosphere spectacular well. It's showing a product that's not accurate. I have, here right now, a Red Bull.

Remember they had a slogan, Red Bull gives you wings. They got sued for that. Right? And it didn't give you wings. So that's part of the issue.

This is an adult activity. It's meant for adults. The problem comes in normalization. It doesn't come just from ads. It comes from YouTube influencers.

It comes from the combination of sports broadcasting. It comes from peers. It comes from adults. If I had more time, I'd share the story of how my son's friend had the gambling app that his father opened up for him. They're bonding.

I said to the dad, you know what you're doing? You're committing a crime. You're allowing an underage young man to gamble. And he's like, what are you talking about? You don't know anything.

Stay out of your business. So that's a cultural phenomena. And so we have a lot of work to do from the ads that we put out that are regulated. But also in talking to the YouTube influencers out there who are not regulated by the FCC and who make money by being gambling, not just gambling, but gambling at extreme excesses to promote all that.

I'll give you one loud, and I'll leave this here as I had an opportunity to do an interview with a YouTube influencer guy named Togi, who's a very, very popular gambling influencer among the young people.

Millions of views on his thing. I had never heard of him. And we sat we did an interview, and it was just so fascinating to me to learn his world. He was being paid by a casino in Europe, and he was promoting gambling activity, promoting that lifestyle, influencing hundreds of thousands of minds every week with new videos. And he has a responsibility, but no one would stop him because he's not under FCC guidelines at all.

That's the kind of thing that changes expectations. So we need other voices to say, no. That is just an entertainment voice. That isn't going to apply to you. Yeah. Yeah.

I have a certain student.

Plenty of time.

So Yeah. But, again I'm a graduate student.

Further calls or, you know, time that people wanna reach out to more info, I'm happy to do to chat anytime.

So thank you, Doctor Fong. Brandon, I'll, I'll take

Thanks, Tim.

Email. You can email questions into Doctor Fong. Doctor Fong, thank you so much. I know you're super busy and, you know, it's very challenging. But I'd like to move on to our next two, our next speaker.

Our next two speakers are, are exceptional, and, and I think would, you know, hit, hit a soft spot for most of us. Our next speaker up is Kim Fredenberg. She's an educator, advocate, and president of Parents Standing Together, a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness of gambling-related harm among young people and supporting affected families. She hold advanced degrees in education and is a certified international gambling recovery specialist.

As a parent of a young man in recovery from gambling addiction, Kim brings lived experience through advocacy for prevention, early intervention, and family support.

Through parents standing together, she helps parents recognize warning signs of problematic gambling, understands its impact on young people, and access education, connection, and peer support. Kim works with educators, Clinicians, researchers, advocates, and other professionals to increase awareness of youth gambling risk and expand resources for families and communities. Kim, thank you for joining us, and if you would like to start, Sarah went over some time.

Yeah. Sure. That's no problem. Thank you so much. Alright.

Hi, everybody. And you can see the screen okay, I think? Yes?

Kurt, you can see the screen? Yeah.

Okay. Alright. Great. Okay. So, welcome.

Thank you. Then you introduced me. That's great. So, I also have my son, Kurt, here. So, Kurt, do you wanna introduce yourself first before we start?

Kim, let me, let me do the introduction for, really quick. I also have his bio. Oh, okay. Kurt is also an advocate and speaker focused on understanding prevention, treatment, and recovery of gambling-related harm, particularly among young people. Having personally experienced gambling disorder as a young adult, Kurt brings lived experience and education in the field to his advocacy.

Kurt contributes to educational initiatives, community and parent resources, and gambling harm prevention and recovery efforts. He has shared his experience with national media, professional organizations, and legislative audiences, bringing a lived experience perspective to discussions about gambling and public health. Through his work, Kurt seeks to help researchers, Clinicians, policymakers, educators, and families better understand gambling-related harm recovery and ways to better protect young people. I just like to say, you know, I, I thought you folks are exceptional.

I saw both of you also at Nico G's, and you could have heard a pin drop when the both of you spoke, especially after hearing Kurt's story.

So thank you for presenting and joining us today.

Alright. Thank you so much. Well, good. Then we don't need to do our intros. That's great.

Thank you guys so much for being here. We're hoping to just kind of add a perspective maybe that's different. A little bit is what is happening sort of behind the scenes, right, and what does gambling harm look like in a family. So, I will let, I believe Kurt, you're up first.

Hello, everybody. Thanks for having me and my mom, of course. And I'm Kurt. I am a person who has dealt with gambling disorder, and now I'm in recovery. And when I grew up, I basically grew up on gambling.

I started gambling at age 11 and knew I was addicted at age 12. And I had a normal life. I enjoyed sports. Aye, you know, like video games as a young man, and, you know, just a normal family life. I had two loving parents and a very nice brother.

So addiction can attack anybody. Even though I did have a nice upbringing and nothing was really wrong with our family, I still got attacked by gambling addiction at such a young age. And I mainly started on skin gambling with Counter-Strike. So I would get us a video game item and trade it to a third-party website for casino credit. And it was completely unregulated, completely illegal, and I was doing this in middle school.

And was gambling on roulette, blackjack, you know, classic casino games in middle school. And I got to college. Well, I was kinda in middle school and high school doing crypto gambling, loot boxes, you know, skin gambling, just all kinds of just anything I can get my hands on. Because I would gamble anything I had access to. I would do micro, I would do surveys for a dollar an hour.

I would do, I would download an app for 50¢ because I had no job at mid, middle school. I had no access to money. So I would just do all these micro tasks online that was, you know, and so boring and so annoying, but I would do it for this $1 an hour just to gamble, just to have that $1 because I was that addicted at age 12.

And when I got to college, I was gambling illegally on illegal offshore websites, and I was gambling illegally on legal sportsbooks because I was in a different state at the time because I'm from California. I was in a different state, and everyone on the college dorm floor was using their mom's information.

Some random mom, we just had her Social Security number and, you know, her address and her name, and we could all gamble on a sportsbook. That's all we needed. There was no face verification. There was no, you know, that's all we needed. It's a gamble.

And everyone on the college dorm floor was doing it, and I basically operated the sportsbook. I was kinda like the bookie for the dorm floor, and I would just, like, a ton of money was going through this every week. So that was also illegal that I was doing. And I was also doing legal sites, some daily fantasy sports. So, you know, the fantasy sports betting, I was doing that at age 18 because that's legal for 18-year-olds.

Thankfully, I never got into prediction markets because that came out after I stopped gambling, but that's also legal for 18-year-olds as well. Legal, I guess. It's illegal, but, you know, they say it's legal in 50 states. I've also never bet in an in-person casino. I never actually because I turned 21, and then a couple days later, I stopped gambling.

I got into recovery. So I never placed a bet in an in-person casino, and my life was still destroyed and burned to the ground even though I didn't do that. So yeah.

Right. Thanks, Kurt. So, from the parent perspective, right, just as you guys are thinking about setting up prevention systems, we talked about the risks that we knew with our children, alcohol, drugs, drinking and driving, all of the things, but we didn't even know to talk about gambling. So this is like what doctor Fong was talking about is, you know, yes. This is a risk-taking behavior, and it's not treated as such.

Right? So we need to educate the public, and especially our kids, about gambling being something that is potentially addictive and potentially life-destroying. Again, not for everybody. Some people can do it, you know, in a healthy way, just like with alcohol, but we need to talk about the risk because we didn't. We gambled in our family all the time and never had these discussions.

So, just also kind of echoing what Doctor Fong said, legalizing gambling is just going to bring increased exposure. Right? So the gambling harm already exists. Right? There's tons of illegal markets.

You know, I've talked to a few people in Hawaii that talk about, you know, ways people are still able to access gambling, though it is illegal. And so the harm is already there. Right? So if you legalize and increase the exposure to it, this is going to increase the level of harm. Right?

Just like doctor Fung talked about with cannabis. Right? So we need to be very careful about setting up systems in place to mitigate this as much as possible. Right? So especially for young people, because that's our focus.

Right? The availability is, it's right there. It's on your phone. I mean, gambling on the toilet that doctor Fung showed, I mean, that is exactly what I hear in my support groups every week. It's super accessible.

Right? You know, prediction markets too, everywhere. All 50 states, not gambling, but 18-year-olds are already into this. Acceptability. Right?

Same, it looks fun. Everyone's enjoying it. It's awesome. We're not showing the harm that's happening to people. That's not in the commercials.

And, of course, the advertising is super, super challenging because it's just, again, it's everywhere, and it's not necessarily portraying the risk factors that we need to be getting across. Alright. Go ahead, Kurt.

Yeah. So I'm gonna get into kinda my collapse story when I got into college and how bad gambling addiction can get for someone like myself. I am not unique. There are millions of Americans suffering. Kids, adults, everybody, all genders are all suffering with gambling addiction.

There's millions of us. So I'm just the spokesperson, but there's there's tons of us. And in college, I basically had a landfill room. I had trash up to my knees of DoorDash trash because I never took out the garbage. You know, I never brushed my teeth, never showered, never, you know, did laundry.

And I was peeing in the tub, because I literally couldn't go to the bathroom and leave my seat. That's kinda what gambling addiction does to someone with a gambling disorder. I literally couldn't leave my seat, because what if the next hand was the 21 in blackjack? What if the next roulette spin hit my number? Like, I literally couldn't risk that leaving my seat to use the bathroom for a minute.

I just had to sit in my seat and pee in a tub right next to me. And I was dealing with an emotional addiction. It wasn't a financial problem. Sure. Like, there was financial things problems that came about.

Like, I was, you know, in a little bit of debt. I was running out of money. But it was it was very emotional. The swings of the wins and losses made me, you know, suicidal, made me pretty much manic. Like, I was insanely happy when I won 5K or 10K, whatever.

And then when I lost it, I wanted to kill myself. And that's, like, a real feeling. Like, I literally wanted to die majority of days in my gambling addiction. Thankfully, I never attempted suicide, but I really thought about it and really wanted to at times when I lost a huge sum of money. This is very emotional, gambling addiction.

And I was addicted to the anticipation of the bet. Like, when the ball spinning around the roulette wheel, when the card's about to be turned over, that's what I got addicted to. I didn't get addicted to winning money or losing money. Got addicted to the high of, you know, not knowing what I was gonna win. I got addicted to the unknown.

And it got to a point where I was stealing from strangers in college. You know, I was I was going to a certain location and taking people's wallets and just any again, anything I had access to, I was gonna gamble. If I won the lottery and won $10,000,000, I was gonna gamble $10,000,000 because there was no stopping me. I was willing to go to any lengths necessary to get money to bet.

And I would go to this place, steal wallets, steal debit cards, credit cards, cash, anything I could get my hands on, laptops, phones, whatever.

And I would, you know, sell them, sell the items, go to 7-Eleven, deposit the money, and gamble. And I often would have to have a ten to fifteen minute walk to get back to my apartment when I deposited the money at 7-Eleven, and I had to gamble right away. I opened up my phone the minute the money hit and had to gamble right away because I couldn't wait that ten to fifteen minutes to get back to my place and gamble on my computer.

I have to gamble on my phone. And oftentimes, I would lose all the money.

It doesn't matter how much money I had, because if I had a thousand dollars, I was gonna do $100 hands. If I had $10, I was gonna do $1 hands. The money I bet was proportionate to how much money I had total. And I would oftentimes lose it in, like, five minutes, literally do a 180, walk right back to where I was stealing from, and steal again, and do that for, like, ten hours a day. Constantly stealing, gambling.

I was also under, you know, doing some drugs under the influence of some drugs. You know, I also deal with drug addiction. I'm also in recovery from that. I don't do anything anymore. But, yeah, that's kinda where it took me to just and then, obviously, I was stealing so much money that I kinda went to jail and got arrested.

I was at the place I was stealing from, and the police pulled up and were like, yeah. You are going to jail. And I was like, alright. Well, I mean, I thought I was invincible when I was stealing. I thought, you know, these people are dumb for leaving their wallets unguarded.

I'm just taking advantage of a silly situation. Because I was so delusional in my addiction that I literally believed that that was okay, and I wasn't gonna get arrested for that, and that they're silly for leaving their wallets unguarded. But, yeah, the police put me in jail, in county jails. This is my second time being in county jail. And, you know, in jail, I kind of you know, I was I was scheming.

I I wasn't like, oh, I and being in jail sucks. I was like, I need to find ways to get money if I can't steal. I need some way to get my hands on money, you know, if I can't. I have no access anymore because I can't steal because I'm in jail. How am I gonna get money to gamble when I get out?

That's all I was thinking in jail. I wasn't concerned about the inmates. I wasn't concerned about jail, the food, anything. And lastly, I thought, as Dr. Fong touched on, I thought it was the solution to my problem. I thought if I gamble and hit a big enough win, I can solve all my problems.

All everything will be solved. I get a girlfriend. I'll get friends. Everyone will love me. My family will love me if I have enough money.

So I like to use this analogy, with cancer. If you have cancer, do you think more cancer is gonna solve your problem? No. That's insane. Like, no.

But gambling addicts, you're gambling a ton of money. You you literally think more gambling is gonna solve your problem and get you out of debt, and, you know, everyone's gonna love you if you have enough money. And I genuinely believe that, which is what kinda kept me gambling. So yeah. I'll pass it on.

Alright. Thanks, Kurt. So from the family perspective, it's definitely something that in in our support groups that I run at Parents Standing Together, this is things you know, every Sunday night, we're on a support group call, and I'm talking to parents every single week coming in. You know, my 19 year old, my 20 year old, 21, 22 year old, and then it just, like, pierces my heart every time, like, a new person comes in that has a child that's suffering.

And what what we hope people understand is, you know, from the parent perspective and really with any addiction, you know, but but I'll speak of gambling, is that once your child has crossed over into sort of being in a in an addiction versus just maybe, you know, either playing recreationally or even starting to show signs of harm, it is a long, long road back from that.

And, as a parent, there is nothing more terrible than watching your child spiral into the abyss of this addiction and not being able to stop it. Right? Because it is not something that it is not rational. You listen to Kurt talk. What he's doing is not rational.

It's not reasonable. And as a parent, you have to just sit by and sort of steel yourself for this, wait for them to finally have a consequence that helps them see the light and really be ready to do the hard work to dig out. Right? So we really need to catch kids before this point because I'm telling you, from this side, once you're there, it is so terrible. And the two times with Kurt where this had happened was the first time he went to rehab.

You know, we had a whole ordeal with him because he knew he needed help, and we knew we were gonna send him to rehab, which, by the way, is really hard to find in this country. And, you know, it was a a a screaming, crying match with him with him saying, like, you're you can't abandon me here. You're not gonna just abandon your child. And we had to say, no. You have to stay at rehab because we have to go.

Like, you have to stay here. We cannot take you home. And he's like, I I'm not gonna stay here. And then we said, well, then you're gonna have to live on the streets here because we were not taking him home. Right?

And and listening to your child crying and and knowing he's sick and suffering and telling you, like, you're you're abandoning me when you know that that's what has to happen for him to get better is absolutely heart wrenching. And then as he talks about the story, as he was starting to steal, so by this point in his journey, we had gotten a little smarter.

We had started going to Gam-Anon, and we knew some of the safeguards that we needed to put in place to, you know, make it more likely for him to choose recovery, saying it in a nice way, right, instead of, like, rock bottom. And we knew he was doing something illegal because he wasn't asking us for money anymore. And, you know, living through those few months where this was going down and I would I would cry on my way to work every day.

I teach high school. I would sob the entire way to work and, honestly, just wish for my car to crash so I could die. Again, I wasn't actively suicidal, but every day, I was like, you know, accident and I didn't have to do this anymore, like, that would be okay. And just waiting for that call because you know the collapse is coming, and and that's why I always use this quote.

My favorite one's from Al-Anon: do not create a crisis, but if a crisis is in the natural course of events, do not stop it.

And as parents, this is the terrible lesson that we have to learn and live through is allowing that crisis to happen. And for Kurt, I thought it was either gonna be jail, or someone was gonna beat him up, to a point where he might be unrecognizable, or, I thought he was gonna take his own life. You know, the suicide attempt rate is one in five, and add in young impulsive male to that, and you can see where this is going.

This is what we deal with every week in our groups. Right?

People coming in, their kids are suicidal, they're in bankruptcy, they're dropped out of school, just complete emotional collapse. Right? And this is what it's like on our side, and I really hope that people making these decisions understand that because we have to do better with keeping kids from getting into this spot, because it's it's brutal. It is absolutely there's no other way to describe it. Okay.

Kurt.

Yeah. So I went to treatment twice, once for a month and then once for ten months. And the first time I went for a month, it didn't really take. So sometimes it takes multiple times to go to treatment to actually for it to stick and for you to, like, stay abstinent from gambling and be in recovery. And it was extremely hard for me to find treatment for gambling in the United States.

I got extremely lucky to go to a place in Los Angeles for free for ten months, and that changed my life. But I look for a long time to try to find a gambling specific treatment center because there's just not enough funding for a treatment center.

And if Hawaii was to make gambling legal, I'd like to see treatment centers in place, therapists in place, you know, guardrails in place before legalization because I was lost without any even in California, there's some there's, like, one treatment center for gambling, and I got lucky enough, and there's 10 beds, and I got lucky enough to get a bed. So there's just not enough treatment options available in the United States for gambling disorder. So yeah.

Yeah. And then and then the thing that that I'm very passionate about with our work with Parents Standing Together now is, we really need a connected ecosystem of support. Right? So it's not just the person that's gambling is not the only one suffering. Everyone around that person is also suffering terribly as well.

And we need to think about support systems not just for the person who is gambling but for everyone around them. Right? Which is why we started Parents Standing Together because we just didn't have that. We we don't have that, especially for parents as these younger and younger kids are coming in. It's a very different demographic to who it's been in the past.

Right? They're coming in really, really young. We have parents of 16 year olds, 17 year olds in our support groups. Okay? Like, they they're already going down in high school, and we have to get better about providing integrated support for the entire family system because everyone's affected and everyone's needed, to be part of the solution.

So now in recovery, my mission in my entire life and to do for my career, I'm currently in college, is to help other people suffering from gambling disorder. Because I know the craziness and agony that I went through to, you know, get into recovery. You know? And I just wanna help other people who are struggling with that because it's not talked about enough in the United States. Gambling is glorified.

Everything is the gamble gamification of everything is just so normalized and socially acceptable in the United States. So I wanna help people who are silently struggling with this addiction. And it's important to catch it before it gets super bad, if possible, like, to prevent the prevention side of it. Because if you were to catch me at age 11, maybe before it got super bad, maybe I would have never gone to jail. Maybe I would have never stolen thousands of dollars.

You know? All that stuff could have been prevented if if I had the right resources in place at such a young age. And being in recovery is so much more stable and better than being an active addiction. I don't miss gambling. I don't miss the throes of the addiction because I was I'm not suicidal anymore.

And I've been in recovery almost three years, and it's just a miracle that I'm not suicidal anymore. It's just yeah. It's a miracle. So yeah.

It It is. It is a miracle. Yeah. This is also where Kurt came with me to the National Council on Problem Gambling Conference this summer, so I chose this picture because it was really it was really great to have him here on the other side.

So so as we conclude, I've just say, like, what I kind of see as Hawaii's opportunity, right, is since you you are at a place now where you're sort of just entering in, you know, to this, legal market, right, is, understand before you make decisions, like, what's actually happening.

Also understand that kids are not entering gambling at age 21. Like, it is happening so much earlier than that for many, many, many of them through various means, and set up those prevention systems to to alert and educate parents and schools and people to watch out for kids before this is a problem. Because like I said, once that invisible line to addiction is crossed, it is a long, long, terrible road back. We we would need to catch it sooner.

Also in catching it sooner, like, what are the systems in place with the operators and with the people operating the the sites and the industry?

What do those protections look like? And are there systems in place to flag problematic play and actually make an intervention, right, so that it doesn't escalate to this point? Treatment, Dr. Fong talked about that. Build a gambling trained workforce, get your levels of care set up, support the entire family system and the entire community system around this, and then prepare by using what we know.

We have plenty of options in other states and other countries to look at where they have fallen down and not done the best job that they could.

You guys have the opportunity to set those things right when you look at implementing this into your state. Right? So please, the potential for additional gambling harm needs to be part of the planning because your addiction rates are going to go up if you legalize. That's just gonna happen. And just planning ahead for what the help is gonna look like for that.

And, Kurt, you can finish.

And thank you for having me and my mom on to speak. We're incredibly grateful, and we hope that, you know, this helps Hawaii not think only about gambling, but about the people and families who'll be affected by the decisions you make. And we're happy to answer any questions you guys may have, so thanks for having us speak.

Thank you guys very much. Appreciate the opportunity.

Kim, Kurt, thank you so much for that heartfelt story. You know, I think your story gets out. It resonates with many families, you know, around the world. And then as we heard you guys speak at, you know, said, you could have heard a pin drop. I actually videotaped the room, and, I mean, everybody is jaw dropped at at that conference.

So thank you, and I wish you well also on your mission to help others to to battle the addiction of of gaming as well. So I'll I'll take it to the I'll go back to Zoom, and, Brandon, you have your hand up. I'll I'll start with you first, Brandon. Go ahead.

Thank you, Senator. Mahalo, Kim, Kurt. Kurt, mahalo for your courage sharing your story. I mean, it couldn't, you know, it couldn't be easy to to share, but, you know, your story is gonna help people, and I appreciate that. Kurt, from your experience, what could schools or community orgs do differently to make it easier for a young person to speak up when gambling starts becoming a problem?

I think educating in schools about gambling addiction that it could be a problem is very important because I grew up knowing that you could become an alcoholic. You shouldn't drink and drive. You shouldn't do any drugs. I grew up with classes, like health classes in school with all of these things. And my parents taught me to never do drugs, don't do shots, don't drink and drive, all these basics.

But I was never told to not gamble excessively, not told to place hundreds of bets a day when I'm in middle school. I I just didn't know what to expect. I was just like, oh, I'm addicted. I'm I'm screwed for life. Like, this is kinda what I was, you know, experiencing.

So if I had, you know, you know, a teacher, if my parents were more educated at the time, they're very educated now. But if they're more educated at the time, then it would have helped me probably tremendously when I was a, you know, a kid going through gambling addiction because I just didn't have enough education. I didn't know what I was battling.

Appreciate that, Kurt. Mahalo. Thank you, Senator.

Anybody else on Zoom has a question? Alan, go ahead.

Thank you. And, Kurt and Kim, thank you so much. Every time I'm at a a meeting, a convention, a gathering, and people are willing to share their life experience is an incredible blessing. So thank you for that. I'm gonna say that this is a question for Kim, it's really for either of you.

How do people find you? How do people know that you exist and come to your meetings?

Excellent question. Well, so we are still fairly new. We've only been at this a little under a year. So we're going to conferences and trying to just get the word out to people who work with young gamblers. Right?

So, clinicians that work with young gamblers. We say send us your parents. We have a website, parentsstandingtogether.org, that's getting out there. We've been fortunate to have a lot of media coverage over the past seven months. You know, I keep track of our articles and we probably have, I don't know, 10 or 12 or 15, media coverages.

Some pretty big ones, like, we were just in Bloomberg and ESPN. And so parents will come to the group, be like, I read the ESPN article, and I was like, oh my god. That's my kid. And then they found us. Right?

So, we're still working on how to get it out there. We're hoping to eventually become the the national voice for parents in gambling addiction. Right? Because that's that's a place that as we work more with people in the space that that's very missing. Parents are not being included, right, as the way that we think that they need to be, especially as this addiction skews so much younger.

It's a whole new thing because we're talking now about kids who haven't even launched. Right? It's not like they're their own. They have their own family. They lost their house, their own family.

We're talking about kids that are still fully reliant on their parents. Many of them are in college, going bankrupt, dropping out, suicidal, and, you know, parents are still pretty involved at that age. But as parents, we need to understand how to be involved in the right way. Right? Because if you, you know, study addiction, there's you know, we have Kurt has his lane and I have my lane, and they are not the same lane.

And parents don't always understand that. So that's where we're really trying to get the word out to so people can find us because we can help them. We are helping people. Absolutely. We have kids getting in recovery.

We have parents that are in a much better place once they start, you know, coming and and interacting with us. We just need the word to get out bigger. So we're looking for that because we're looking, you know, for funding so we can grow. But we're still in the infancy stages of that.

Well, thank you both again.

Thank you. Thank you, Alan. Paul, you have your hand up, Paul. By the way look at it.

You got you got a fashion show going on.

I know. Right? It's like you're so fancy now. Thanks for putting on a tux for our presentation, Paul.

That's right. Just for Kim and Kurt, I did this. I had to take off my UNLV red. You know, that was not appropriate for sure. Kim and Kurt, thank you for sharing your story.

I I did have a chance to hear you at NCPG as well, and it's it I imagine it never gets easier to tell the story and and sort of relive it in your mind.

But I'm very curious, you know, if there's a sort of an early detection warning system you were gonna create, are there things that you could systematically put into whether it's a statute or regulation or an insurance product or something along those lines that would get education's extremely important, but it's difficult to do all the time the same way and get everybody the same intel.

So I didn't know if there was something that you saw in your journeys that that would help build a system that would make it easier for parents and and and those that are suffering through the addiction to recognize as well?

Yeah. Well, I think, you know, of course, first, the education for parents to understand the warning signs. Right? I like to use the example of Kurt in his first year of college when he was really starting to collapse, came home. He was in another state and loved the NBA. All the players knew every stat, knew every single everything.

And I was like, oh my god. This is so exciting. Let's go see the Warriors. So we went to a Warriors game. Instead of me going like, oh my god.

My child has a gambling addiction because this is an insane amount of sports knowledge. Right? Like, I didn't see that warning sign. Right? Parents don't see the warning signs.

And other people you know, when kids are in various states of collapse, and parents or, you know, schools or whoever, like, well, I just can't figure out what's what's happening with this kid. Probably it's gambling because it's very hidden like that. Right? And then as far as us seeing the warning signs, right, the people who have access to, how the kids are playing. Right?

I I say kids. I mean, talking about, like, you know, be even, you know, up to, like, 38. 44 is, I think, our oldest kid in the group. Right? Our our children.

Right? Is is I would like to know and be able to see, like, what are the warning systems from the operator side. Right? Like, what is where because, like, all of our kids basically so we you know what I mean? Like, whose kid's betting on Japanese baseball in the middle of the night?

Like, everybody. Okay? So, like, that's a harm activity. Right? So, like, Dr. Fong saying, person gambling on the toilet is not for entertainment.

Somebody in the middle of the night betting on an obscure sport in another country, like, that's probably someone experiencing harm. Right? So where what kind of systems can we put in place to catch these as they're happening? Right? Like, to catch these signs of harm before they go down.

So, like, if we as the parents start looking and the schools are looking and the industry's looking and the regulators are looking and everybody is looking because everyone has the same goal. Right? Nobody wants people to have their lives destroyed from gambling. Nobody wants that. Right?

Nobody nobody that's no one's goal when they wake up in the morning. Like, I can't wait for another kid to be suicidal. Nobody thinks that. Right? But we all have to get on the same page because we all have a piece of the puzzle, and we all have to be working for the common goal because, like, our kids are going down.

Like, our kids are going down. And I've we've only just, I think, started to scratch the surface of what is coming with this. And we all have a piece of the puzzle, and we all need to get together and be on the same team. We're all on the same team in this.

Thank you.

Anybody else on Zoom, have have a question for Kim or Kurt? Okay. Anybody here? Okay. So so I I have a a question, for both of you.

So Hawaii and Utah are the only two states that do not have legalized gaming. You know, as lawmakers ourselves trying to decide whether or not to legalize, and as we heard earlier from Dr. Fong, what about $9,000,000 they have used to help address addiction prevention and so forth. How how would you I mean, what would be your talk or or your, recommendation to Hawaii while we don't have the revenue stream from a legal gaming or brick and mortar?

What what would be you know, because as we prioritize, right, health health and education, you know, how do you convince, I would say, lawmakers here in Hawaii to try and address it while we have a lot of illegal gaming going on?

Because I do realize, and I think Dr. Fong made it very clear at NCPG, he wasn't pro gaming or or anti gaming, but he did feel that the resources of revenue from gaming was very helpful to use to address the addiction, the prevention, infrastructure, and so forth.

Help help us get a better understanding on how do you address that with no legal form of gaming in Hawaii or tax-based revenue aside from, I think Kurt brought it up earlier, online predictions, which is somewhat legal in 50 states, but not.

Right. It's legal. It's just not gambling. It's not gambling. But, like, okay.

Come on. But yeah. Well, I mean, like, I'm not super well versed on the whole way things are funded yet. Right? But if if you don't have legalized gambling funding, right, that doesn't mean that, again, like, you you still have the harm from a plethora of other things.

Right? And that will continue whether it's legalized or not. But I think we need to do a better job at talking to our people in, you know, behavioral health, substance use addiction. Like, we need gambling to get on the same footing with these other addictions. Right?

Because substance use gets I forget what the stat is. It's like 380,000,000,000 to, like, zero for us. Right? Is is, we need gambling to have that same level of urgency as other drug addictions have. And as Dr. Fong pointed out, like, gambling is crossing all of the things.

We're crossing suicidality, substance use. You heard Kurt say that he developed a substance use disorder to cover the pain of his gambling disorder. Right? It it went in that way for him. Some people, it goes the other way.

And then, you know, depression, we have so many kids that are in, you know, major depressive disorder, and gambling kind of spans all of that. So however these other programs are being funded to help with those other issues, gambling needs to get in with them. Right? Because that money should also be going towards towards gambling addiction.

Thank you. Oh, hi, Dr. Fong. You're back again. By the way, anybody have a follow-up question for Dr. Fong while he's here?

So so I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you folks for joining us. I you know, we're so grateful for the presentation, and we look forward to coming up with a report that we're gonna be giving back to the legislature come January. But, you know, it was super helpful for us. On behalf of the working group, I just wanted to thank all of you for being here and presenting today.

And with no further questions, this info info briefing is adjourned. Thank you.

Thank you.