Gambling News

“Taking an Online Gamble”

Problems associated with gambling starting to appear in colleges.

As online gambling popularity grows day by day around the world, young adult populations and college students are no exception. Researchers estimate that already approximately five percent of college students have severe gambling problems and about another 15% are showing signs of a gambling problem. Furthermore, as colleges are reluctant to get involved in monitoring and regulating what students do in their own time, the Internet gambling businesses are specifically targeting students. Online gambling operators are well aware of their appeal to college students and because there are no regulations in place and access to the sites is easy, meaning that all someone has to do to play is transfer his money to an online account.

The other worrying addiction on campus is alcohol and this is similar in nature to online gambling. Both are seen on campus all too often. Both addictions are still considered relatively minor vices but both are hard to control and regulate. To complicate matters, the online gambling sites are operated from other countries where gambling is not prohibited, which makes monitoring even more difficult. In the U.S., the industry is unregulated since the activity itself is illegal and it is impossible to regulate and illegal activity.

It is almost impossible to stop college students from gambling because of the lack of monitoring and regulations and the ease with which anyone can access and play online poker. Clearly this does not mean that all college students are problem gamblers, but some definitely are and something has to be done to address the problem. A gambling addiction can reach very destructive levels and is especially difficult to treat because it is an embarrassing habit.

Now state lawmakers have made an attempt to combat the problem by introducing SB 5037, which is supposed to fund treatment for problem gambling and SB 5878, which would prohibit online gambling altogether. However, the passage of these bills will not be easy.

At this time help for gambling addiction for students and in fact for anyone who needs help with a gambling addiction is available from Gamblers Anonymous at the Washing State Council on Problem Gambling at www.wscpg.org.

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