Abstract
In 2008 tobacco was banned in federal correctional institutions in Canada. In this paper we compare the use of tobacco as currency for gambling in two studies that we conducted, one before and one after the tobacco ban. The data from two studies were compared. The questionnaires were administered to offenders in federal and provincial institutions in Ontario. Study 1 included 254 male offenders and study 2 included 395 male offenders. The focus in this paper is on one questionnaire about the type of wager made while incarcerated. It was found that the use of tobacco as a currency in gambling went from 28.6% of those offenders who gamble to 2.3% of those offenders who gamble. In addition, there was an overall decrease in the number of federal offenders who reported gambling while incarcerated. However, information gained from the questionnaire and from interviews with incarcerated offenders suggests that there has been a shift to money wagers and that gambling inside has become more serious since the tobacco ban. The results suggest that the ban on smoking has resulted in a change in the type of currency used for gambling inside correctional institutions in Ontario Canada.
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Notes
For sample 2, the program Stata was used to compute robust standard errors that take into account the sample clustering for these z-tests of proportions. The z scores were computed using excel as follows: z = (p1 – p2)/SQRT(POWER(se1, 2) + POWER (se2, 2)) taken from http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/ab-testing-significance-calculator-spreadsheet-in-excel/.
Note that during study 1, tobacco was also available as a canteen item. Most canteen items were specific (e.g., pop, chips, chocolate), but some participants just said “canteen item”. Consequently, these numbers could underestimate tobacco use as a currency in study 1.
Two offenders reported playing on the internet, but we do not know what this referred to because they do not have access to the internet. This might have referred to bets placed on a sport book by a person on the outside. The internet response was included in the “other category”.
It is suspected based on interviews with some offenders that most of the “unit” type responses were a reference to canteen items.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the assistance of Crystal Saunders during study 1, and the help of Angela Paglia-Boak at conducting some of the analyses reported in this paper. This report was funded by a grant from the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Center. In addition, support to Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) for salary of scientists and infrastructure has been provided by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care (OMHLTC).
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The project was reviewed by the CAMH ethics review board and approved as Protocol #238/2004 and renewed as #040/2006. The ideas expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of either the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, or Correctional Service Canada.
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Turner, N.E., Preston, D.L., Mcavoy, S. et al. The Use of Tobacco as Gambling Currency by Federal Offenders in Canada Before and After a Tobacco Ban. J Gambl Stud 29, 97–107 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-012-9295-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-012-9295-z