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Time For A Public Health Response To Gambling 2024

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17 views1 page

Time For A Public Health Response To Gambling 2024

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sivagurunathan.school
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Editorial

Time for a public health response to gambling


Today, we publish the Lancet Public Health Commission are supporting gambling expansion. The boundaries Published Online
October 24, 2024
on gambling—an inquiry and response to a neglected, between digital gaming and gambling are also becoming https://doi.org/10.1016/
understudied, and expanding public health threat. blurred. With the gambling industry leveraging digital S2468-2667(24)00248-2

Gambling is not a simple leisure activity; it is a health- transformation, the need to prevent and mitigate See The Lancet Public Health
Commissions page e950
harming addictive behaviour. The harms associated gambling-related harms is even more prescient.
with gambling are wide-ranging, not only affecting an For too long, governments—also conflicted because
individual’s health and wellbeing, but also their wealth of the benefits they gain from taxes and revenues of a
and relationships, affecting families and communities profitable industry—have paid little attention to under­
with potential lifelong consequences, and deepening standing gambling-related harms. They have relied
health and societal inequalities. By assessing the barriers on oversimplified approaches, pointing to individual
to preventing gambling-related health harms, the responsibility and the dangers for individuals at high-
Commission unveils and deciphers the intersections risk. Balancing public health with competing economic
between the social, commercial, legal, and political interests is now crucial. The Commission calls on
determinants of health. governments and policy makers to treat gambling as
The Commission estimates that 46·2% of adults and a public health issue—just as for other addictive and
17·9% of adolescents had engaged in gambling in the unhealthy commodities, such as alcohol and tobacco—
past year, globally. While only a small proportion of and provides recommendations to prevent and mitigate
individuals will be classified as engaging in problematic the broad range of harms associated with gambling.
gambling (1·4%), considering the effect of gambling Interventions at both population level and individual
across the entire spectrum of consumption is crucial. An level are important. The Commission calls for effective
estimated 5·5% of women and 11·9% of men experience gambling regulation to be put in place in all countries,
any risk gambling. The epidemiological landscape is and to include reductions in population exposure,
changing, with a substantial number of women and through prohibitions or restrictions on access, promotion,
young people taking part. For the gambling industry, marketing, and spon­sorship. The Commission also asks
this is not an epidemiological landscape, this is a rapidly for the provision of affordable, universal support and
expanding and highly profitable market. treatment for gambling harms alongside campaigns
Building on the Lancet series on the commercial to raise awareness of those harms. The Commission
determinants of health, and the work of others recommends that regulatory protections include children
who have for decades described harmful industry and young people, enforcing minimum age require­
practices, the Commission delves into the commercial ments and mandatory identification; the provision of
determinants of gambling. The commercial gambling effective consumer protection measures, such as uni­versal
sector promotes its products and protects its interests self-exclusion; the regulation of products propor­tionate
by adopting corporate practices designed not only to to the risk of harms; and measures limiting gambling
influence consumer behaviour, but also the narrative consumption, such as enforceable deposit and bet limits.
and political processes around regulation—with a The industry will claim that their products are enjoyed
tendency to focus on individual responsibility rather by millions of people, the overwhelming majority of
than broader policy changes. Such practices are not new whom do not suffer adverse consequences, and that
and have been used by other harmful industries, but in such recommendations are unfairly encroaching on the
today’s digitalised, interconnected, and borderless world freedom of individuals. This Commission exposes these
they pose increasing threats to public health. assertions as deeply misleading. Governments have a
The Commission describes a complex gambling duty to protect their citizens from harmful and addictive
ecosystem with unparalleled realms and capacities offered products and to adopt a public health response to
by digital transformation. Use of innovative digital gambling. ■ The Lancet Public Health
marketing to target consumers through social media Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open
Access article under the CC BY 4.0 license.
and user data, along with sports and media sponsorship

www.thelancet.com/public-health Vol 9 November 2024 e831

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