UK - “Gambling addiction: its relationship to drugs, alcohol, crime”
Posted: 21 November 2007 | Subscribe Online writes Natalie Valios
You probably don’t see yourself as a gambler. But many of us - about 32 million to be precise - have participated in some form of gambling in the past year. And when you look at the number of ways in which we can lose our money - from playing the National Lottery, bingo or gaming machines to betting on the horses, doing the football pools or visiting casinos - odds are that most of us gamble more often than we believe.
Since the Gambling Act 2005 relaxed rules on advertising for casinos and online gambling sites and introduced powers to license so-called super-casinos, fears have been raised about a possible surge in problem gamblers. Just before the British Gambling Prevalence Survey 2007 was published two months ago there was a flurry of media stories predicting exactly this.
But they were wrong. Contrary to speculation, the number classed as problem gamblers - more than 250,000 - is about the same as in the last prevalence survey in 1999. And the number of adults who gamble has fallen by about one million in the past eight years.
However, with more than £10bn expected to be lost by punters next year, Mark Griffiths, professor of gambling studies at Nottingham Trent University, denies claims of scaremongering over the problem.
“People seem to think there’s no problem because it has stabilised,” says Griffiths, who co-authored the prevalence study. “But a quarter of a million adult problem gamblers is a public health issue.
“Problem gambling can negatively affect significant areas of a person’s life, including their physical and mental health, employment, finances and relationships.”
