Think Youth Gambling Is Harmless Fun? Don't Bet On It
Recent articles about youth poker in The Grand Rapids Press suggest West Michigan considers youth gambling a benign activity. But youth gambling is not a cause to be celebrated or encouraged. Both Canadian and American studies have repeatedly demonstrated that youth who gamble are 3 to 5 times more likely than adults to later develop serious gambling problems. In the past year, 80% of American adolescents have gambled for money, 5% to 8% already have a serious gambling problem, and another 15% are at risk for developing compulsive gambling problems.
So why in a West Michigan culture that values hard work and thrift do we look so blithely upon our youth’s involvement in the national craze for poker and other forms of gambling? Don’t get me wrong. I consider poker and any other card game (I was a Rook aficionado in college) a potentially enjoyable activity—as long as players are not gambling. But raising the stakes by placing money or any other item of value into the pot changes the equation entirely.
Youth gambling begins early (average age 12 years) with the endorsement of family and friends, through sports betting (now the focus of a major NCAA study chaired by University of Notre Dame president Edward A. Malloy), lottery tickets purchased as gifts from grandparents, and school-sponsored casino nights in gymnasiums (in a misguided attempt to provide youth with a harmless alcohol-free activity). But creating gambling opportunities for young people makes no more sense in terms of public health than passing out cigarettes in grade school, serving alcohol at the prom, or providing condoms at freshman orientation.
The median level of youth gambling in the 1980s was 45%. In the 1990s median youth participation in gambling moved to 65%, and it is now at 70%. The fastest growing addiction among high school and college age young people is problem gambling. Edward Looney, director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, says that youth gambling “is festering at the high school level and is an epidemic at college.” College students have been the fastest growing segment of the gambling market for the past decade. One result has been sports gambling scandals at Arizona State University, Boston College, Columbia University, Northwestern University, and the University of Maryland.
Howard J. Shaffer, the director of the Division of Addictions of the Harvard Medical School, said, “We will face in the next decade or so more problems with youth gambling than we’ll face with drug use.” Youth problem gambling knows no gender, racial, or ethnic boundaries. It is an equal opportunity destroyer.
Despite what some parents may think, gambling is not a trifling, innocuous activity keeping kids out of worse problems. Gambling is a bottomless pit from which some of our young people may not climb out.
In the interest to long-term health, schools, including colleges and universities, should develop policies regarding youth gambling, similar to those already in place for drug and alcohol use. Public awareness and prevention are a lot less stressful and expensive than treatment programs.
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Published as “Think Youth Gambling Is Harmless Fun? Don’t Bet On It,” The Grand Rapids Press, (November 27, 2004), p. A13.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved
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