Gladstone still one of state's gambling hotspots

GLADSTONE remains one of the state's gambling hotspots with more than $38.9 million churned through our local pokies in the past financial year.

The statistics are higher than they have ever previously been, with 11 new poker machines facilitating the increase.

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One poker machine serves 51 Gladstone residents, and if every resident equally distributed the money into the machines, we would each be feeding almost $700 into a poker machine annually.

The numbers are up $118,826,000.16 from the 2012-13 period.

Gladstone is only a pocket of a state-wide problem, with more than $2 billion injected in Queensland pokies each year.

National survey data examined by the Productivity Commission in 2010 suggests up to 600,000 people use pokies regularly, with 15% of those - or 95,000 - being problem gamblers.

These addicted players make up less than half of 1%, but make up about 40% of poker machine spending.

Most used pokies:

Yaralla Sports Club: 108 machines

The Club Hotel: 40 machines

Harvey Rd Tavern: 45 machines

Tannum Sands Hotel: 45 machines