Effects of gambling

Good post and congratulations on your progress! Our brains are not constructed to stop subliminal messages from the media and they know it. The brain on young people will for ex reprocess negative messages to positive ones so in this example it would not matter if the adverts told people to play or not the brain would still redo it to "ok I need to play". Now if you can not protect your brain from media messages you can imagine what happens?

Fresh blood for the industry. You are quite right it is disgusting that this is allowed to happen everywhere and if there are any petitions to the leaders make sure you sign your name. It can only change if they are aware that we the people do not like it. 

Yes its the acceptable face of addiction in the governments eyes because of the tax revenue they collect from it....its a very nice earner for them so why would they rock the boat.

This addiction has gone exponential and I believe there will be a day when it can be covered up no more.

Its a national scandal of monumental proportions but they are trying to keep a lid on it for the obvious reasons above.

The false advertising is disgusting because by its very nature the "big winner" is extremely limited and funded by the countless losers. The ASA should be on that one but they are not

The effects of gambling are Bankruptcy divorce, family breakups, hatred isolation, homelessness, crime, prison, depression, lives ruined, lives wasted, paranoia, fear, violence( domestic and otherwise) extreme mental illness (piled on top of original mental illness) suicidal thoughts and death. Maybe I should put death at the top of that list because that is the result for enough people.

Its every train stop on the route to pure hell as the mind craves a drug fix.

The medical experts must tell them about the way this addiction works but they choose to do nothing significant about it.  Ok there have been some inroads with credit cards banned but the machine producers are already getting around the £2 limit with their devious tricks.

What they do is pay it lip service. A screen asking if the punter wants to set limits is not protection...a leaflet in the gambling den is not the protection needed.

At the very least it should be away from the high street and a full sign in process. This should carry some sort of income check and strict limits on what can be gambled. 

That is not happening though and I would ban it all. 

I dont agree that its fun or entertainment...I see addicts and addicts in the making. I see dens of iniquity draining communities and feeding from the vunerable.

I believe that the addiction sets in very quickly indeed. I see addicts who dont even think they are addicted. It took me 40 years to realise I was a compulsive gambling addict.

Best wishes to everyone on the forum

thanks for your post and congrats on overcoming this beast 

Yes, I agree with you... we don’t see ads on the TV of a heroin addict injecting himself with heroin...but yet there’s gambling ads everywhere...The amount of money to be gained of gambling taxes is unfortunately to big to get rid of the ads and yes that makes me feel really angry. How many people have taken their own lives because of this gambling addiction trap... “ when the fun stops, stop” what a load of nonsense...” when the fun stop...one wants to stop and then realized one has an addiction...and can’t stop...

thanks for your post

xx

I used to have a fairly liberal view of gambling, thinking it was a little bit of fun that some people enjoy so why interfere?

My own extent of gambling was to buy a scratch card at a petrol station about once every 6 months or so. Sometimes I won £2, mostly I lost. Who cares.

Then I saw the effect of compulsive gambling on my brother. It was hard to believe at first, I thought there must be more to all his problems than something so simple! But no, it was gambling. 

He lost tens of thousands of pounds, his marriage, his house, his friends...you know how it goes. The speed it all happened was truly shocking.

Now, I believe that the harm gambling does to some people’s lives far, far outweighs the enjoyment that non-problem gamblers experience. If gambling was banned tomorrow, non-problem gamblers would think “aw that’s a bit of a shame. That’s a little bit of fun I occasionally had that I now won’t get. Oh well, never mind.” And that would be it.

But the effect on compulsive gamblers would be huge. Really huge! The only time my brother has really started to make progress was when he COULDN’T gamble, when the choice was made for him by circumstances. I think that most compulsive gamblers would see some short-term pain, but then immediate improvement in most aspects of their life.

Even from a financial point of view, I don’t think the argument for keeping gambling stacks up. Yes taxes are collected, but problem gamblers are also hugely expensive for the government to deal with. There’s NHS costs, lost employment (which leads to lost taxes and a benefits bill), not to mention the costs of dealing with all of the secondary social problems such as homelessness etc.

It goes against the grain for me to say so, as I’m a libertarian at heart and don’t believe the state should interfere generally, but in this case I really do think we’d have a better society and a happier population without gambling.