LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: The social scourge of problem gambling has recently been the subject of intense political debate. But it's rare to see up close and personal the heartbreak it can cause. 

Tonight a single mother who was a financial administrator in Adelaide is getting ready to go to jail. She stole more than $800,000 from her employers to feed her poker machine addiction.

Leanne Scott will be sentenced tomorrow. She's spent the past two days packing up her life and she shared her story with our reporter Guy Stayner.

LEANNE SCOTT: I'm a pathological gambler on poker machines and unfortunately I've stolen some money from previous employees to fund that addiction.

GUY STAYNER, REPORTER: How much did you steal? 

LEANNE SCOTT: It was just over $800,000.

GUY STAYNER: Leanne Scott is packing up her belongings preparing for the big move. Today she was saying goodbye to her pets. She's sending two cats to the RSPCA. While the scenes are familiar for anyone who has shifted home, this otherwise typical single mum isn't going interstate or overseas. She's getting ready to go to jail.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3544877.htm

from Crikey …..

The major TV networks - Ten, Nine, Seven and SBS – have refused to air an anti-pokies ad from rabble-rousers GetUp, which seeks to draw attention to the fact that Coles & Woolworths own poker machines.

The ad is a true account of a woman who lost her partner, who was addicted to gambling, to suicide.

GetUp! hasn't given up on airing the ad & is trying to get it on cinema screens or regional TV. In the meantime, given that you can't see it on TV, you can see it here ….

Problem gamblers - including one who stole $800,000 to feed her pokies habit - say an anti-depressant drug may have a connection to their habit.

Efexor is a drug used to prevent and treat a relapse of depression.

As yet, there is no clinical proof linking gambling addiction to Efexor.

However, two weeks ago, Leanne Scott revealed to the ABC's 7.30 program that she was using the drug not long before she began committing fraud to feed her 'pathological' addiction to poker machines.

"I started the drug Efexor in late 2003 ... and it was in 2004 that the stealing started." Scott told the program.

"I really had an 'I don't care attitude' ... like I knew what I was doing was wrong but I don't care."

"I'm actually (undergoing) therapy at Statewide Gambling therapy service, and my counsellor says she is actually seeing a lot of people who are taking Efexor.

Scott has since been sentenced to two years' jail for fraud.

Now, more gambling addicts have come forward to reveal they too were using Efexor while their addictions raged.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-23/addicts-link-anti-depression-drug-to-gambling-habit/4148950

I would be prepared to believe that not all problem gamblers take such "medicine" but it could have an effect... 

The treatment of depression with drug has always been iffy in my book... But it seems prozac has had a "certain success"...

The treament of depression is always delicately poised and need some incremental self-management that is performed in a safe-environment such as family taking care of our physical needs (food shelter warmth) while we deal with the necessary safe "delusions" out of the trough of depression. Depression can be of many kinds from hardware troubles (wrong chemical balance in the brain) to software problems (we cannot accept a fact, a non refutalble reality — emotional or tramatic — that goes against our stack of beliefs). Read more in the pursuit of happiness... and in that line of articles... Drug treatment may not work the same for all people....

Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith has blasted the head of News Limited, accusing the organisation of biased and intimidating reporting.

In a scathing letter to News Limited CEO Kim Williams, Mr Smith says the organisation has no interest in free speech, merely profits for its shareholders.

In the letter, he writes that Mr Williams' recent claims the Government is endangering freedom of speech is "claptrap".

As an example he accuses News Limited of not running one of his paid advertisements because it criticised the organisation.

Mr Smith says the original ad which News Limited refused to run was about unsustainable economic growth.

"I have a thing called the Wilberforce Award, which is an award of $1 million to go to a young person who can communicate clearly to people around the world that we can't always have growth," he said.

"I'd prepared an advertisement, basically a paid announcement, to go in the Murdoch press because I've never mentioned the Wilberforce Award.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-23/dick-smith-writes-scathing-letter-to-news-ltd/4149136