The Harmful Impacts of Gambling
Whether buying lottery tickets, betting on a football team or picking players for your fantasy sports team, gambling is an activity that involves risking something of value in order to receive a potential reward. It’s a common pastime that has many social and health benefits, but it can also cause significant harm to individuals and the wider community. Gambling has been shown to have negative impacts on health and well-being, financial stress, family violence and mental illness. These harms can persist throughout one’s lifetime and can even be passed down through generations.
There are a few key factors that lead to gambling harm, including the ease of access to gambling products and the aggressive promotion of these products in the media and in popular culture. The marketing of gambling products often targets people with a higher risk of uptake – for example, through sponsorship or other association with popular sporting leagues and through colocation of gambling products in high-traffic public spaces. Efforts to normalize gambling further contribute to its uptake, such as the inclusion of gambling in school curriculum and business conferences, and the use of gambling imagery in advertisements for other products.
While there are many reasons why people choose to gamble, it is often rooted in the desire for hope and chance. When you place a $20 bill in the slot machine, you’re not thinking “this will end badly.” Rather, you’re hoping – perhaps irrationally, but nevertheless – that you will defy the odds and win big. The idea that you are special and able to beat the system taps into a deep human need for faith, belief, ritual and to feel chosen.
The negative economic, labor and health and well-being impacts of gambling have been observed at the individual, interpersonal and community/societal levels. They can be structural, e.g., increased debt and financial strain leading to homelessness; or they can be cyclical, such as loss of employment leading to a lack of income.
It can be difficult to quantify the impact of gambling, especially when the effects are considered as a combination of costs and benefits. Some studies have attempted to quantify the “consumer surplus” associated with gambling (which equates to the difference between what people would be willing to pay for the product and the amount they actually spend), but this is problematic because it attempts to put a monetary value on something that is non-monetary.
Instead, it is important to focus on preventative interventions that reduce gambling-related harm, such as universal pre-commitment systems that require people to set binding limits on money spent on gambling and self-exclusion schemes (allowing people to ban themselves from gambling providers). These measures can be highly effective in reducing harm, but they should be implemented alongside an increase in funding for treatment services. This will ensure that the health and wellbeing of gamblers is taken seriously and not commodified. It will also help to ensure that harm reduction policies and programs are well-funded, effective and widely implemented.
