The harms to health and wellbeing from gambling are ‘more substantial than previously understood’ says the Lancet Public Health’s commission on gambling, extending beyond gambling disorder to include a wide range of other harms and affecting ‘many people’ in addition to those who gamble themselves.
Evolution of the rapidly growing gambling industry is at a ‘crucial juncture’, the document states, as it becomes increasingly digital in nature. Governments worldwide have so far paid too little attention to gambling harms and done too little to prevent them, it adds. ‘Decisive action now can prevent or mitigate widespread harm to population health and wellbeing in the future’. The commission is calling for stronger and internationally coordinated harm-prevention policies and regulation controls, ‘independent of industry or other competing influences’.
‘The global gambling industry is rapidly expanding, with net losses by consumers projected to reach nearly US $700bn by 2028,’ the document states. ‘Industry growth is fuelled by the rise of online gambling, widespread accessibility of gambling opportunities through mobile phones, increased legalisation, and the introduction of commercial gambling to new areas. Recent expansion is most notable in low-income and middle-income countries, where regulatory infrastructure is often weak. Online gambling, given its borderless accessibility, is available everywhere via the internet.’
The consequences of this shift to digitalisation have not been fully recognised, it adds, while sophisticated digital marketing via social media and user data, along with sports and media sponsorship, are all helping to drive the expansion of the industry. ‘The boundaries between digital gaming and gambling are also becoming blurred,’ it adds, and urges governments to prioritise protecting health and wellbeing over ‘competing economic motivations’.
‘Gambling is not a simple leisure activity; it is a health-harming addictive behaviour,’ says Lancet Public Health. ‘The commercial gambling sector promotes its products and protects its interests by adopting corporate practices designed not only to influence consumer behaviour, but also the narrative and political processes around regulation – with a tendency to focus on individual responsibility rather than broader policy changes. Such practices are not new and have been used by other harmful industries, but in today’s digitalised, interconnected, and borderless world they pose increasing threats to public health.’
‘Most people think of a traditional Las Vegas casino or buying a lottery ticket when they think of gambling,’ said the commission’s co-chair, Professor Heather Wardle of the University of Glasgow. ‘They don’t think of large technology companies deploying a variety of techniques to get more people to engage more frequently with a commodity that can pose substantial risks to health, but this is the reality of gambling today. Anyone with a mobile phone now has access to what is essentially a casino in their pocket, 24 hours a day. Highly sophisticated marketing and technology make it easier to start, and harder to stop gambling, and many products now use design mechanics to encourage repeated and longer engagement. The global growth trajectory of this industry is phenomenal; collectively we need to wake up and take action. If we delay, gambling and gambling harms will become even more widely embedded as a global phenomenon and much harder to tackle.’
Commission report available here