Arnie Wexler, a former gambling addict who works as a certified compulsive gambling consultant and who recovered from his addiction 50 years ago, said he is very worried because many people will be betting for the first time in the short term.
For him, the legalization of bets is going to turn into a virus, whose consequences would begin to be seen in a couple of years. "With the opening of casinos in Atlantic City in 1978, treatment centers grew everywhere.
We are opening the door to a big problem of gambling addiction, but the States are making money, and that is what it is about. Nobody cares that the lives of people are destroyed. "
According to provisions provided by Wexler, before the casinos opened in New Jersey there were a dozen meeting places for players with problems and four years later there were already 47. With an almost apocalyptic tone, the consultant said that the Supreme Court created a true circus and that there will be so many people addicted to the game in the coming years, that "it will be a true volcano of gambling addiction in the United States".
As the former Executive Director of the New Jersey Compulsive Gambling Council, Wexler recalled a 1986 Gallup poll that predicted, according to him, an imminent explosion. The survey explains that before the legalization of the state lottery, 31 percent of the population said they played lottery in the illegal circuits. Then, the survey found after that 81 percent of the same people played the state lottery. As he explains, in the US, most ordinary people would never do anything out of the law, such as betting with an illegal broker, but those people could massively turn to gambling once the bets have been legalized. For him, the Supreme Court left open the door to an epidemic.
A recent survey carried out at the request of the American Gaming Association (AGA) estimated that at least 28 million Americans are going to place sports bets after the Court's ruling, especially for the ease of playing online. For Richard Daynard, a professor of law at Northeastern University and Director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute, what the Supreme Court did was to facilitate the expansion of the game, since it will basically be on anyone's desk.
For her part, Marlene Warner, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Council on Gambling Problems (NCPG), believes that regulators and sports leagues that will benefit from the millions of new entrants, should Use part of that money to help fight any problem that has come up in the game.
"The expansion of legalized gambling in the United States will likely increase people's participation and the consequent gambling problems unless steps are taken to minimize the damage," Warner said.
Also, Keith Whyte, Executive Director of the NCPG said that gambling addiction resulted in social costs of nearly $ 7 billion last year, most of which come from public health and criminal justice. Whyte explained that the Council is asking for a national safety net to be established, which should be financed with 1 percent of the income generated by the legal gambling activity.
According to data from the NCPG, last year generated 115,000 million dollars in legal bets and the states allocated 71 million for the prevention and treatment of addiction, a tiny percentage of that huge mass of money. This situation, explain the experts, is leaving huge holes in the safety net, which at this moment has a potential massive expansion.
The money that states allocate for prevention covers some lines of treatment and educational messages, and several of them are not adequately prepared to provide assistance programs for people with some degree of pathology.
Critics of the decision of the Supreme Court of the USA, explain that while the governors are already counting the cash that will come with legal sports betting, safety nets are not being treated in the way that such expansion requires.
They insist that legalization will increase the activity of gambling and with it the problems of pathological gambling, unless immediate measures are taken to minimize the damage if it is not to become a real public health problem.
