Sat Mar 5, 6:40 PM ET
HALIFAX (CP) - Addiction to video lottery gambling will be added to the vices portrayed on the popular television program Trailer Park Boys in the show's fifth season.
Actor John Dunsworth, known for his role as the power-tripping Jim Lahey on the show, said Saturday that residents of the park will become hooked on the gaming machines.
The social problems portrayed will strike many as art resembling real life in Nova Scotia, where the program is produced.
Dunsworth, 58, is a self-admitted VLT gambling addict who is now lending his name to campaigns to have the 4,000 government-owned machines outlawed in the province.
He has said he's been hooked on VLTs for over five years and has lost thousands of dollars a year compulsively pumping loonies into the boxes.
The successful actor and casting director said his character in the series is typically devious in his response to the problem.
"Mr. Lahey sees the problem in the (trailer) park," he said.
"It becomes apparent in season five that one of the people in the park does have a problem and Jim Lahey being Jim Lahey of course, instead of trying to alleviate the situation and give them help, he'll try to exploit the situation to his own ends."
The machines were at the centre of political debate in the legislature this week, with the opposition Liberal Leader Francis MacKenzie calling for removal of the province's 4,000 machines by 2008.
The Liberals say the $133 million the province expects to earn from VLT profits this year pales in comparison to the sum it shells out for social assistance to help the families of addicts.
Tory Premier John Hamm has refused to order the province's gambling agency to pull the VLTs, arguing it will simply drive them into the black market.
But Dunsworth, who attended a Saturday meeting of a new coalition working to rid Nova Scotia of the gaming machines, said the Liberal party has a point.
"These machines, everything people say about them - that they're crack cocaine, that the government is addicted to gambling revenue - it's all true."
"Without the machine available, addictions will be cut down," he said.
Debbie Langille, a 51-year-old recovering VLT addict, said the actor's support on the issue is helping raise its profile.
"I hope we can get more people who are in the public eye to come out," she said.
