Doctors harm young people with warning advertisements that warned
Doctors are calling for restrictions on sports betting advertisements, saying that they are setting up youth for the future of the problem gambling.
Family doctor Dr. Shannon Charlebis said, “I have seen people’s lives falling in all ages, from all areas of life, whether it is an accountant with a career behind him, or a child who is just looking to maximize his college fund, who then lost all this within a case of a few weeks,” the doctor of the family. Shannon Charlebo, who is also a medical editor in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ).
Charlebois and Dr. Shaun Kelly Published Editorial How to have betting advertisements everywhere during the game broadcast on Monday in SMAJ and online gambling has made every smartphone a possible betting platform.
Even if the advertisements are not targeting the youth, they still look at them and are impressed, Kelly said, who watches the game with her twins.
Kelly said, “These advertisements are not directed to nine -year -old children sitting with me, but they are picking up it.”
An emerging issue
While Kelly mainly focuses on matters of substance use, he all works with drug addiction disorders, and has begun to screen for gambling behavior – something that he believes that he is an emerging issue.
He told CBC News on Monday, “I have seen an increase in gambling loss among those who are less than the age where they should be legally allowed to engage in any gambling.”
“The specific story I am seeing in the clinic is a 13- or 14-year-old boy who borrowed father’s credit card, or mother’s credit card, some are engaged in online waging and lost a significant amount.”
A recent report by the McCrary Center Society analyzed the findings of the BC Kishore Health Survey in 2023, which was completed by more than 38,000 youths in 59, 59 out of 60 school districts of BC. Report co-writer Annie Smith said that online gambling activity had increased in youth since the final survey in 2018.
Kelly says that gambling addiction still takes a lot of stigma, so people try to hide it and hesitate in search of treatment.
He says that the study of Norway, UK and Canada has shown hundreds of teenagers who reduce less severe gambling problems. He noted that this has been the greatest growth of concern in his clinic and can cause financial and emotional stress for the youth and their families involved.
Long -term loss of gambling addiction
Kelly says that there are other affiliated losses that come up with gambling issues.
He said, “We know that the use of substance increases, we know that other criminality or crime also increases,” he said, gambling behavior suicides may also increase.
Dr., a scientist at the Center for Addition and Mental Health at Toronto. Nigel Turner told CBC News that most people who have gambling problems in life begin before the age of 19.
“Generally, this is something that is a lifetime,” said Turner. “If you start gambling when you are young, you establish gambling habit that can resonate throughout your life and take you into serious financial problems.”
A 2024 report By Lancet Public Health Commission on Gambling, Gamba stated that “there is sufficient threat to public health,” and urged governments to reduce public health loss.
Turner said, “When people hit the point in their gambled career where they can no longer find any resources and they are desperate for money (and) are embarrassed how much they are lost … Suicide is something that they will contemplate as many gamblers as their only way,” said Turner.
Efforts to limit the risk of youth
Charlebois says betting sites say they are only for 19 and more people, the youth are being submerged with advertising that enjoys the game with betting.
She says that the brains of children and adolescents are still developing and continuous contact for gambling messages normalize harmful behavior they can take to adulthood.
“It is very dangerous for children that it is normalizing a known harmful behavior during an impressive phase. And it is actually an appeal to the youth who are predetermined to enjoy geneically, biologically risking,” she said.
Professor Bruce Kid, a former track and field athlete and gambling advertisements at Toronto University to ban advertisements on Monday, told the CBC on the coast that advertising poison the idea of ​​the game and adding the increasing number of people to the very serious forms of psychological loss.
Charlebois says that a bill has been introduced in the Senate to regulate sports betting advertisements and if passed, will be a good start to address the problem.
She wants to see banned gambling advertisements during the games and is removed from social media platforms used by the youth.
“There is no limit to how many of these advertisements can be placed within a sports broadcast or how long they can be,” Charlebois said, given that in addition to advertisements, sports betting platforms are named on football grounds and hockey rinks.
Since 2021, when the federal law loosened the rules around sports betting, Ontario has gone to the full throttle, which has called many called wild waste gambling environment. Jamie Starsin of CBC explained how single-game betting has changed the game for some fans and why drug addiction experts are worried.
Education on ban
“There are many regulations of advertisements,” Canadian Gaming Association (CGA) president and CEO Paul Burns told CBC News on Monday. ,
Burns says CGA is monitoring data and that online gamble advertisements represent about two percent of the total advertisements on television and about five percent of the total expenditure in TV advertisements.
He said, “Even in last year’s NHL playoffs, a gambling company did not make the top 10 advertisers,” he said, “He said that betting advertisements at NHL broadcast were at four percent last year, below six percent a year ago.
He agrees that it is important that the advertisement be done in a responsible way – especially when it comes to the youth – but believes in education and awareness rather than limiting access.
