CLAYTON — NoCasino Thousand Islands will host the Coalition Against Gambling in New York's annual meeting Saturday.

The meeting, to be held at the Antique Boat Museum, 750 Mary St., will be open to the public as board members hope to create awareness of predatory gambling and other issues.

Charlotte L. Wellins, co-president of NoCasino, said the day will start off with an 8 a.m. coffee hour, followed by organizational business, eating lunch and listening to a handful of speakers until 4 p.m.

Joel Rose, coalition chairman, and Les Bernal, executive director of Stoppredatorygambling.

org, are among the many speakers who will share their take on gambling.

Mrs. Wellins said she hopes the conference will reach at least a couple of people who otherwise might get seduced into the fantasy world of gambling.

"The two largest-growing populations of gamblers are senior citizen women and teens, mostly males," she said. "People's grandmothers are spending their days getting on those buses and going over to casinos, with a Social Security check, is not uncommon."

A recent survey found there are 4,000 problem gamblers in Jefferson County alone, Mrs. Wellins said, so having the conference close to home could help attract some of them.

Some of the problem gamblers also will be speaking Saturday, sharing their experiences and the troubles they faced.

Mr. Bernal said the promotion of predatory gambling is turning a country of small bettors into a country of habitual bettors, forming two classes of people in the process: the investor class and the lottery class.

"This is not a movement about whether or not you and I play poker on Friday nights with the neighbors, or buying a square in the Super Bowl office pool," he said. "It's using gambling to prey on human weakness for profit."

Gambling all boils down to hurting people in the end, as financial or other issues arise, according to Mr. Rose.

"We don't define our concern only with certain forms of gambling, but we tend to focus more on the egregious, harmful forms of gambling," he said.

At the state level, he said, the coalition is most concerned with casinos and parts of the state Lottery.

The group also voted to oppose the state Lottery game Moxie Mania, a computer-generated touch screen video amusement game that is gaining attention in a battle over whether it's a gambling device or a legal machine to be used in a licensed establishment.

There is a $15 registration fee for the daylong meeting. If people are interested in attending only the lunch and the speakers forum, the cost is $5.

For more information about the conference, call Mrs. Wellins at 482-6946.