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Australia’s gambling reform advocates were left disappointed after a meeting with the country’s Prime Minister’s Office led to them being told by a senior advisor that they did not believe gambling addiction was as serious a problem as smoking addiction.
According to a story in Crikey, an online independent news source in Australia that focuses on politics, investigations, and analysis Gambling Reform advocate Mark Kempster, who is open about his own battles with sports gambling addiction, told the website that after he raised the point with the Government advisors that he believed gambling was a public health issue. This, he said, was backed by research that it is along the same lines as what cigarettes have been in the past. Having made that point though, he was met with the belief that it was not in the same category.
“When that was brought up, basically the adviser that I spoke to said that they didn’t see it in the same light. They think that one cigarette can do damage, but one bet can’t do the same amount of damage as one cigarette can do, which I strongly disagreed with given my circumstances.”
“Myself and my colleague [also an Alliance for Gambling Reform lived experience advocate] basically said that we found that really difficult to hear, we’ve lived through what one bet can do to someone, what bets can do to people — it is the same, addiction is the same whether it’s cigarettes or alcohol.
“It only takes one bet to get addicted to something, so to not see it in that light was really disappointing to hear. All the research that has been done shows [it is] the same public health issue as any other addiction.”
Initially believing the meeting to have been constructive, Kempster now believes, “it was probably a bit of lip service they were paying to us at the time.”
Gambling reform has become a huge political talking point in the country of late. A report in 2023 highlighted that, “Three in 4 (73%) Australians aged 18 and over reported spending money on one or more gambling products in the past 12 months.”
Featured image courtesy of Pexels
