Wales’ Gambling Epidemic

March 5, 2008

According to a recent study, the people of Wales have developed a very serious online gambling problem. It showed that roughly £169 per head was spent on online gambling last year, coming out to millions of pounds lost at the online casinos.

It showed that somewhere around £500m was lost in online gambling ventures, which is double the amount that was lost in 2001. Experts say that this is a disturbing trend and likely to end up with more and more gambling addicts if it continues.

This amount does not take into account the lottery or the bingo halls, these numbers are simply that money gambled on the internet. Shadow Welsh Minister David Jones said that online gambling was becoming a real problem for their residents as people have found how convenient it is to play the online casinos from the comfort of their own home. Jones said that they are literally sitting at home with their tea or wine and “fritter[ing] their life’s savings away.”

It seems that when online gambling was illegal there was not a problem, but now that it is legal it has become more widespread. The Westminster Government has warned the online gambling industry that they have to start paying more for gambling addiction programs, or they were going to be forced to make them give more.

Experts say that they feel this increase in online gambling started when the National Lottery came into play as well as the abolition of the betting tax. With people having more ways of participating in gambling, and with it costing them less, there is no reason for them not to – besides of course the amount of money that they are losing on a daily basis.

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