The UK has always been relatively lax as far as gambling laws – as long as you’re over 18, you can play in online casinos to your heart’s content, or enter a bookmaker and place a couple of bets on whatever you want (from horse racing to, say, the next Doctor Who), or, naturally, spend an evening in an elegant casino playing about with a bunch of chips. But while the availability of gambling is generally a great thing that more countries should learn from, there’s one glaring issue in the whole ordeal, namely – gambling addiction. To put it very simply, your brain simply adores to receive rewards. It’s not just yours, of course, since most mammals love to be rewarded for performing an action (that’s exactly why your puppy can shake hands on command if offered a treat afterwards). Whenever you do something positive and immediately receive a reward for it, your brain shoots up a chemical called Dopamine, which makes you feel happy and content. Problem is, Dopamine is REALLY addictive, and it’s kind of the underlying cause behind multiple different types of addiction.
Thrill seekers, gamers who spend 18 hours a day playing MMO games, and, of course, gamblers, are all addicted to dopamine. Whenever you win and you see your numbers go up or your chips being pushed towards you, you receive a dopamine dose which makes you crave more. “Maybe,” your subconscious mind is telling you, “if I place just one more bet I’ll win again! That’d be so awesome!” And before you know it, you’ve lost your house, your family and even the clothes on your back. Obviously, this is a gigantic problem, so how do we combat it? What can we (and by “we” I mean “either the government or big casino chains”) do to discourage this?
Several measures, some more drastic than others, can be taken. First and foremost – limit the amount of time that someone can spend in your casino. The average person doesn’t spend 40 hours a week playing in a casino, and if they can’t stop themselves, chances are you’ll need to stop them in turn. Most physical casinos these days require key cards to enter – all a casino has to do is not let in people who were already there that week. Exceptions can be made, of course (if you go to a casino resort for a couple of days it’d be dumb if you only got to play once), but for the most part, this should be enforced rather strictly in both land-based and online casinos. Alternatively, only let people deposit cash into chips or online credits once a week (and similarly, only allow them to withdraw once a week). It’s very hard to say “Well, I lost everything, but I’ll surely win if I just invest a bit more” when you’re not physically allowed to.
Unfortunately, these suggestions, or anything else that limits gambling addicts’ play, will never be implemented. Why? It’s simple – because casinos make up most of their revenue off of addicts. Does anyone remember the case from last year when Paddy Power encouraged a man to continue gambling even after he’d lost his home, five jobs and pretty much everything he owned, including his family? At any point the employees could have stepped in and told him “Sir, that’s enough, time to go home,” but they didn’t, not because they’re bad people, but because they’re not allowed to if they want to keep their jobs. And that has to change. At the end of the day, the only way gambling addiction can be curbed is if the casino industry takes a hit in profits. There’s literally no other alternative.