A former Olympian, Bruce Kidd is a co-chair of the Campaign to Ban Ads for Gambling.
I became involved in the anti-gambling campaign because I hated the way betting poisons the culture of sports. Betting reduces sports to whether a team or a player achieves a point spread, or a certain number of free throws, or even wins a coin toss. It disembodies sports, replacing the joy of effort with the touch of a phone.
But as I learned more, I could see that it’s first and foremost a health issue. Mental Health Research Canada recently reported that the risk of problem gambling in Canada is 7 per cent among adults, and 15 per cent among youth 18 to 34. That’s more than a million Canadians. The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health reports that for every person addicted to gambling, another five to 10 are negatively affected. Gambling can lead to runaway debt, stress to families, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and even suicide. It’s particularly rampant among young men. Coaches and athletic directors tell me that athletes are gambling away their tuition fees, meal and rent money. I regularly hear from parents who have to give adult children their inheritance to bail them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.
It’s a worldwide problem, too. In a recent report, The Lancet calls gambling “an expanding public health threat,” and concludes that “governments have paid too little attention to gambling harms and have not done enough to prevent or mitigate them.” It documents how the gambling industry has manipulated digital platforms to make them even more addictive. It calls for “stronger policy and regulatory controls focused on harm prevention and the protection of public health, prohibitions or restrictions on access, promotion, marketing, and sponsorship; the provision of affordable, universal support and treatment for gambling harms, and international coordination.”
During a recent Canadian Senate committee hearing on the bill to regulate ads for sports betting, Michael Grade, chair of the British television regulator Ofcom, observed that “Canada is on the lowest slopes of a very steep climb” to mitigate the harm from betting and other forms of legalized gambling.
Ontario illustrates why that climb will be so steep. The Ford government wants limitless gambling. It dreams out loud about turning Niagara Falls into Vegas North. Several weeks ago, it sought the approval of the Ontario Court of Appeal for expanding the reach of Ontario gambling operators into the U.S. and other countries. It keeps taxes on gross revenue for gaming companies low at 20 per cent, compared with 40 per cent in most U.S. states and 51 per cent in neighbouring New York. Ontario eliminated funding for research into problem gambling, and provides no new funds for treatment and education.
Whether by government directive or its own decisions, the Ontario regulator, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), does little to police the ads and other practices that encourage problem gambling and addiction. Although its regulations stipulate that ads cannot employ influencers who “would likely be expected to appeal to minors,” actors with extensive credits on films aimed at young people, such as Jamie Foxx and Jon Lovitz, are used regularly. When the Campaign to Ban Ads for Gambling complained, the AGCO refused to take action, rationalizing that “the potential appeal of celebrities is dynamic and varies by individual.” Neither the AGCO nor the Ministry of Health funds public service ads depicting the risks and harms of gambling, as was done during the height of the anti-tobacco campaigns.
Ontario prides itself as a leading centre of legalized sports betting and gambling. But it’s woefully deficient as a protector of public health. It needs a regulator that actually regulates. There are obvious reforms that should be introduced immediately. The AGCO should introduce software to flag and prohibit addictive technologies and identity recognition software to make it impossible for any underage person to bet; require debit cards instead of credit cards to reduce debt; and create a universal self-withdrawal program, in which addicted gamblers could register with a single application to have their access blocked at all sites in the province. As has been widely reported, the current plan has a million loopholes. Educational programs in schools and sports organizations and public service ads about the harms of gambling should be well funded.
Most of all, Ontario should drop its promotion of “responsible gambling” in tiny print at the bottom of ads, a strategy that blames the victim – and replace it with a public-health approach, taxing the industry to pay the full cost of education and treatment for gambling harms.