Gambling and Public Health

Commercial gambling now permeates our society. In Australia, pubs, clubs, newsagents and casinos sell gambling products, and Australians spend (or, it might be said) lose around $18 billion a year, most of it on poker machines (also known as electronic gambling machines, or EGMs). Gambling businesses sponsor elite sports and good causes; state governments reap billions from the proceeds of gambling. But at any one time hundreds of thousands of Australians are directly affected by the consequences of excessive or ‘problem’ gambling, and many times that number of family members, employers or loved ones are affected by the gambling problems of others with whom they have a connection. The consequences of excessive gambling include physical and mental ill-health, family breakdown, the neglect and abuse of children, financial ruin, crime and associated incarceration, and in some cases self-harm and suicide. These are not trivial, and it is clear that commercial gambling in its current form presents a serious threat to health and wellbeing.

However, unlike many other such threats, those presented by commercial gambling are highly avoidable, and highly amenable to a full range of public health interventions. The gambling industry and many governments and regulators focus on the individuals affected, and although the counselling and other support services they offer are important and should be continued the approach adopted in the amelioration of the harms of problem gambling has been focused on the ‘pathologised’ individual. This approach minimises the responsibility of gambling businesses and governments, whose revenue shares would be adversely affected by serious upstream action against gambling.

A comprehensive public health approach to gambling is necessary if we are to reduce these harms and generate social conditions which support health and wellness. These include changes to regulation to ensure that gambling devices are safe and that the interest of those who use them are well protected, technological interventions to allow gamblers to much better track and control their expenditure of time and money, systems to allow the earliest possible identification of those with a developing gambling problem, and to facilitate early intervention, and prohibitions on dangerous marketing such as promotions involving children, free food and drink, or rewards for gambling expenditure.

Our research goals are focused on identifying harmful products, practices and marketing and developing responses derived from contemporary public health thinking. Many governments and regulators have adopted the rhetoric of public health, but the challenge is to see this rhetoric translated into action, with the goal of limiting the harm derived from gambling to the lowest possible level. Research focused on this challenge is an essential element of good public health practice.

http://www.iga.sa.gov.au/pdf/0801/Final%20report.Print.Feb08.pdf
This is the site for 'The Relevance and Role of Gaming Machine Games and Game Features in the Play of Problem Gmblers' produced for the Independent Gambling Authority of South Australia

http://www.justice.vic.gov.au/wps/wcm/connect/DOJ+Internet/Home/Gambling+and+Racing/Research+and+Statistics/JUSTICE+-+Changing+Electronic+Gaming+Machine+Industry+and+Technology+(PDF)
This is the site for 'The Changing Electronic Gaming Machine Industry and Technology' produced for the Victorian Gambling Research Panel