Digital Scholarship and Initiatives

This report briefly reviews the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and the three categories of gaming it defines.  It then explains the nature of the tribal-state compact between the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the State of North Carolina, signed in 1994 and renewed (for thirty years) and expanded in November 2000.

Following brief discussions of the Harrah’s Cherokee Casino and the current bills for full federal recognition of the Lumbee, the report provides more extensive analysis of the impacts of casino gambling.  If a casino were built on I-95 in Robeson County, it would be accessible to about 39,000 automobiles per day and would be the only casino on I-95 between New Jersey and Florida.  The report then discusses gambling addiction; the increase in crime that follows introduction of a casino (citing evidence from law enforcement officials in the area of Harrah’s Cherokee Casino); effects of gambling on the family; the drain of income from consumer goods and services to gambling and from business and tourism in other areas of the state to the local area of the casino; the increased taxpayer costs for public services; and the costs of “broken families” of gambling addicts to local governments, to employers, and to insurance companies.

Note: The President of the North Carolina Family Policy Council, William Brooks Jr., testified about his concerns over the possibility of a casino in Robeson County during the April 1, 2004 hearing on H.R. 898 (see JENK029).