With the pending results of the much-anticipated Gambling Act review lurking, one mainstream media outlet is calling for an "intervention" that is claims is "long overdue."
In an editorial written by The Guardian and published on Monday, the newspaper write that "the enormously profitable gambling industry has been on notice for some time" and that "amid mounting evidence of the severe problems that its products can cause, with hundreds of gambling-linked suicides every year, the government launched a review of current laws in 2020."
Industry lobbyists have spent the intervening period doing all that they can to soften the expected blows to their business model, while campaigners, including bereaved families, have argued for a regulatory framework that takes human frailty into account. Evidence suggests it is the latter who have the public’s support, with one survey showing that three-quarters of adults favour restrictions on gambling adverts.Read the entire editorial here: https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ion-is-overdueThere is plentiful evidence, including in a new book by the Guardian’s Rob Davies, that companies have grown more sophisticated in their efforts to maximise profits by exploiting cognitive biases and disguising losses as wins. Between 2020 and 2021, the firms handed over £225,000 in “wages and freebies” to MPs. Since 2020, a former Labour MP Michael Dugher has been a prominent industry lobbyist.
Denise Coates, the billionaire owner of Bet365, pays more UK taxes than anyone else. Inevitably, such wealth brings power. By contrast, there can be few people more desperately powerless than the people – often young men – who have gambled too much and found themselves in debt, obsessed and afraid. It is the government’s duty to protect both these adults and children, who Prof Bowden-Jones says have been placed at risk by “too much exposure to gambling” since the advent of ubiquitous online and sports advertising and smartphone access to 24/7 betting apps. MPs must call time on the claim that gambling is harmless fun.