( CNN ) -- What harm does it do ? That 's the challenge the casino industry puts to its critics . A new report by the Institute for American Values presents the answer . Until the late 1980s , casino gambling was illegal almost everywhere in the country . Today , casinos are allowed in 23 states . These newly authorized casinos are not Las Vegas-style grand hotels . Their customers come from nearby . They do n't stay overnight . They do n't watch a show or eat in a fine restaurant . Perhaps most surprisingly : they do n't play cards . Modern casino gambling is computer gambling . The typical casino gambler sits at a computer screen , enters a credit card and enters a digital environment carefully constructed to keep them playing until all their available money has been extracted . Small `` wins '' are administered at the most psychologically effective intervals , but the math is remorseless : the longer you play , the more you lose . The industry as a whole targets precisely those who can least afford to lose and earns most of its living from people for whom gambling has become an addiction . The IAV report cites a Canadian study that finds that the 75 % of casino customers who play only occasionally provide only 4 % of casino revenues . It 's the problem gambler who keeps the casino in business . Slot machine payouts vary state by state . Some states set a required minimum : 83 % in Arkansas , for example . Others leave that decision up to the casino , as in Georgia and California . Some states require casinos to disclose their payouts . In others , that information is kept confidential . Based on what is published , however , it 's a fair generalization that a player can expect to lose 10 % to 15 % of his or her stake at every session . The cheaper the game , the lower the payout : slots that charge $ 5 per round pay better than slots that charge a penny . When New Jersey allowed casinos into Atlantic City back in 1977 , casino advocates promised that gambling would revive the town 's fading economy . The casinos did create jobs as promised . But merchants who expected foot traffic to return to the city 's main street , Atlantic Avenue , were sorely disappointed . The money that comes to the casinos , stays in the casinos . Liquor stores and cash-for-gold outlets now line the city 's once-premier retail strip . The impact of casinos on local property values is `` unambiguously '' negative , according to the National Association of Realtors . Casinos do not revive local economies . They act as parasites upon them . Communities located within 10 miles of a casino exhibit double the rate of problem gambling . Unsurprisingly , such communities also suffer higher rates of home foreclosure and other forms of economic distress and domestic violence . The Institute for American Values is sometimes described as a socially conservative group , but with important caveats . Its president , David Blankenhorn , has publicly endorsed same-sex marriage , and its board of directors is chaired by Bill Galston , a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton . The IAV is as worried that casinos aggravate income inequality as by their negative impact on family stability . Before the spread of casino gambling , the IAV comments , the typical gambler was more affluent than average : it cost money to travel to Las Vegas . That 's no longer true . Low-income workers and retirees provide the bulk of the customers for the modern casino industry . And because that industry becomes an important source of government revenue , the decision to allow casino gambling is a decision to shift the cost of government from the richer to the poorer , and , within the poor , to a subset of vulnerable people with addiction problems . From the IAV study : . `` Modern slot machines are highly addictive because they get into people 's heads as well as their wallets . They engineer the psychological experience of being in the 'zone ' - a trance-like state that numbs feeling and blots out time/space . For some heavy players , the goals is not winning money . It 's staying in the zone . To maintain this intensely desirable state , players prolong their time on the machine until they run out of money - a phenomenon that people in the industry call 'playing to extinction . ' '' How heavily does gambling weigh upon the poor , the elderly , the less educated , and the psychologically vulnerable ? It 's difficult to answer exactly , because U.S. governments have shirked the job of studying the effects of gambling . Most research on the public health effects of gambling in the United States is funded by the industry itself , with a careful eye to exonerating itself from blame . To obtain independent results , the Institute for American Values was obliged , ironically , to rely on studies funded by governments in Britain and Canada . But here 's what we can conclude , in the words of the Institute : . `` [ S ] tate-sponsored casino gambling ... parallels the separate and unequal life patterns in education , marriage , work , and play that increasingly divide America into haves and have-nots . Those in the upper ranks of the income distribution rarely , if ever , make it a weekly habit to gamble at the local casino . Those in the lower ranks of the income distribution often do . Those in the upper ranks rarely , if ever , contribute a large share of their income to the state 's take of casino revenues . Those in the lower ranks do . '' Is this really OK ? Are Americans content to allow the growth of an industry that consciously exploits the predictable weakness of the most vulnerable people ? 27 states still say `` no . '' If yours is one such state , fight to keep it that way . If not , it 's never too late to find a better way . Read the full Institute for American Values study for yourself and see how much is , quite literally , at sake . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Frum .
David Frum says a new report makes clear the damage casinos do . He says they extract earnings from Americans least able to afford it . Casinos are bad for property values , do n't revive troubled neighborhoods , he says . Frum : Government benefits from taxes on casinos and officials do n't question the harm .