Gambling Becomes 'Silent Addiction' Among Teens, Researchers Say
SAN FRANCISCO – The rapid growth of legalized gambling in the United States and Canada has drawn more and more teenagers
into games of chance, with many finding it more addictive than smoking, alcohol, or drugs, researchers reported yesterday.
“We call it the silent addiction. You can’t smell it on their breath, you can’t see it in their eyes,” said Jeffrey Derevensky of McGill University in Montreal. “Gambling is going to become a huge social policy issue.” A set of studies presented yesterday at a meeting of the American Psychological Association revealed that between 5 and 8 percent of young Americans and Canadians report a “serious” gambling problem – a rate almost twice as high as that among adults.
From card games in school cafeterias to sports betting pools and visits to casinos, gambling among teenagers is rising, fueled in large part by massive advertising lotteries, the researchers said.
`They become involved with gambling sooner than they become involved with smoking and alcohol use,” said Randy Stinchfield of the University of Minnesota, who surveyed almost 200,000 Minnesota teenagers on their gambling habits.
“This is the first generation of kids exposed to widespread gambling advertising, and gambling opportunities. Some kids are now seeing gambling as a rite of passage.” Every state except Hawaii and Utah has some form of legal gambling, and researchers said the hype around huge lottery payoffs is helping to lure children.
“The lottery does have that effect,” said Durand Jacobs of Loma Linda University in Redlands, Calif. “I call it the Pied Piper of gambling for kids.”
Jacobs’s research said that while alcohol remained the major threat for most teenagers,gambling is catching up quickly and is already a larger problem than smoking or drug abuse. Stinchfield’s study showed how pervasive gambling has already become among youth.Some 80 percent of teenage boys surveyed in Minnesota reported gambling at least once during the previous year, and 20
percent of them gambled weekly.
“Boys gambled three to four times more often than girls, and older students gambled more often than younger students,” Stinchfield said.