New Lancet report criticizes industry’s influence on PG research

Lancet on finger
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A new report from the medical journal The Lancet takes a deep dive into the topic of problem gambling and its conclusions point a lot of fingers towards the gambling industry.

The Oct. 24 commission consulted experts across a range of disciplines and read and analyzed a wealth of material, including 299 different prevalence studies before releasing its findings.

“This Lancet Public Health Commission should mark the beginning of a serious and sustained effort to apply public health logic as countries and communities respond to the rapidly increasing threat of gambling harms,” the report read. “We acknowledge that implementing these recommendations might take time, will not be easy, and will require sustained effort and cooperation from multiple international actors. We hope to establish a clear direction for future action that will lead to effective policy design and implementation.”

Lancet concerned regulators and researchers too close to operators

The commission concluded that the gaming industry’s involvement with gambling research is potentially problematic.

“The gambling industry also exerts considerable influence over research into gambling and gambling harms, which helps it to retain control of the framing and messaging surrounding these issues,” the commission said.

“Framing the problem in this way and narrowly focusing policy attention on a small subset of the people who gamble draws attention away from industry practices and corporate behavior. We must also seriously examine the structures and systems that govern the design, provision, and promotion of gambling products.”

The report also questioned the efficacy of regulatory policies given the practice of the “revolving door policy” where those regulators exit public service and immediately enter into jobs working for the operators and licensees they previously oversaw.

The Lancet said that even regulated gambling markets lack the safeguards necessary to properly protect most patrons from harm.

Gambling harm could impact nearly 450M people

In addition to looking at structural problems that impact the efficacy of addressing problem gambling, the commission also offered some projections on prevalancy rates.

The report concluded that 5.5% of women and 11.9% of men experience risk gambling, which it defined as “occasional experience of at least one behavioral symptom or adverse consequence from gambling.” Extrapolating those rates to a population level, that means roughly 447 million people negatively impacted by gambling, 80 million of which have experienced problem gambling.

“Moreover, we estimate that gambling disorder could affect 15.8% of the adults and 26.4% of the adolescents who gamble using online casino or slot products, and 8.9% of the adults and 16.3% of the adolescents who gamble using sports betting products,” the report added.

Lancet also noted that the technological advances in the industry are moving much faster than gambling harm research, so it is unclear what the full impact of the digitalization of the industry will be.

The report looked at social media, for example, and noted that across influencer and operator accounts, there are hundreds of thousands of gambling messages being sent each year. Looking at the top five biggest U.K. operators, the report noted they tweeted, on average, 78 times a day.

Lancet’s suggestions for the future

In addition to highlighting issues, the Lancet commission also offered three core suggestions as to how the field can move forward and improve:

Reductions in population exposure and the availability of gambling, through prohibitions or restrictions on access, promotion, marketing, and sponsorship
Provision of affordable, universal support and treatment for gambling harms
De-normalization of gambling via well resourced social marketing and awareness campaigns