Gambling Addiction Growing at Colleges
October 11, 2009
College officials across the nation are starting to become concerned with the number of college students that are turning to online gambling. Even though payment processing of online gambling transactions is illegal within the United States, there are still ways around this law. Many college students are somewhat successful at their online gambling and are using it as a means to supplement their income. This is great for those that are successful, however for everyone who is there are many more that are not.
According to the National Center for Responsible Gaming, over 40% of college students have gambled in the last year alone. Many college campuses are now offering land-based gambling addiction programs in addition to programs that are geared towards online gambling. For those colleges that are located within a casino town, they try to stress the importance of finding other things to do within the town or on campus rather than heading to these casinos.
There are numerous cases out there where these students are using online gambling as a source of income. Lehigh University became aware of the online gambling problem within their school when their former class president robbed a bank to fund his online gambling addiction. Many students say that the amount of money they make allows them to do things that they otherwise would not be able to do.
Colleges are on the lookout for any change in behavior with any of their students to see if they may have developed an online gambling addiction. They say that students who normally get good grades and attend classes that start missing classes or dropping grades usually have some sort of a problem. Of course this problem could be drinking or drugs, but now they are looking for signs of online gambling abuse as well.
