EDITORIAL: Keep eyes on gambling addiction
Feb. 13—The American Gaming Association expected 50 million Americans — 20% of the adult population — to bet $16 billion on Sunday's Super Bowl, at casino sports parlors and through their online equivalents.
That is double the $8 billion that Americans legally wagered on the 2022 game.
Only five years ago, sports betting was illegal in most of the United States.
But in 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a federal law that outlawed sports gambling everywhere but Nevada and Delaware. Since then, 33 states including Pennsylvania have legalized it.
In the first 11 months of 2022, The Hill reported, Americans bet $83 billion on sports, $6.6 billion of which gambling companies kept as vigorish — 15 times their take for all of 2018.
Gambling is addictive, but more insidiously so than alcohol, tobacco or drug addictions. An addiction often doesn't become obvious until it causes a personal financial crisis.
State governments reap tax revenue from gambling but typically pay scant attention to addiction, which is certain to grow with gambling.
As celebrities shill for legal bookies and gambling companies focus on campuses to secure young customers, more addiction is inevitable.
As Lia Nower, director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University, put it:"We are where cigarettes were in the 1940s and alcohol was in the 1950s."
History shows that is not a good place. The state and federal governments should more closely regulate sports betting and work to prevent addiction.
