Americans can now gamble on anything, anytime, anywhere.
Most of us carry a mini-casino around in our pocket. Want to bet on tonight's NFL game? There's an app for that. You don't need a casino to play poker, but if you want the feel of felt and plastic chips on your fingers, one is likely nearby. If you'd rather put your money on a presidential election, the proliferation of online prediction markets means you can. Surveys indicate upward of 70 percent of US residents participated in some kind of gambling — whether the lottery or a raffle or blackjack or a sports wager — within the past year.
Gambling is sanctioned by the government — especially state and local governments, which are guaranteed to make money as gambling expands. It's endorsed by cultural institutions like the NFL. It's becoming an inextricable part of sports fandom: ESPN, the flagship sports television network, licensed its own brand to a sportsbook last month.
The rest of this story is on Vox.com. But I wanted to briefly pull out one specific thread for VoxCare: how the pandemic may have contributed to America's gambling problems.
This came up multiple times in my conversations with academics who study gambling and people who work in treatment. Youssef Alami, a clinical psychologist with the Alberta Gambling Research Institute at the University of Calgary, pointed to the way the pandemic forced everyone onto their phones and computers; online gambling has been associated with higher rates of problem gambling. Alami compared your phone's gaming apps to a slot machine, the kind of pull-the-lever gambling that can quickly become compulsive, especially for someone already predisposed to gamble. Even the financial speculation facilitated by smartphones — crypto and meme stocks — has a similar effect on a person's brain.
While overall gambling revenue dipped in 2020 (before rebounding to hit a record high in 2021), there was evidence that a growing number of gamblers were exhibiting risky behaviors. The share of Americans who said they had sought financial help in the past year because of their gambling or had lied to others about gambling rose from 2 percent to 6 percent from 2018 to 2021, according to one national survey. Another study concluded that certain vulnerable groups, particularly the people who had a history of problem gambling, were at a higher risk of increasing their gambling during the early months of the pandemic.
Arthur Flatto, a leader at a nonprofit focused on prevention, compared the Covid-19 pandemic's effect to the prohibition of alcohol in the 1930s. Researchers have found that, after an initial dip when Prohibition was first established, alcohol consumption soon surged and exceeded its pre-Prohibition levels, which of course contributed to the policy's undoing.
Gambling revenues resumed their rise after 2020, reaching new highs in 2021 and again in 2022. With the continued expansion of sports betting in particular, there is no reason to expect the gaming industry's growth to slow down.
Legalization isn't going to be reversed, for one thing. Everyone acknowledges that. But the people who work in treatment say the US health system is not prepared to treat the Americans who have developed gambling problems. Too few resources are being devoted to researching problem gambling and providing care to people who need it.
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