I've been addicted to electronic gambling machines since the age of 11 when I first started playing them in the local seaside town where I went to school. 30 plus years on and I'm still struggling to beat this addiction.
I progressed from playing fruit machines to playing FOBTs and online roulette, 3CP. The amounts I lost increased beyond all correlation to my ability to earn a wage as my addiction progressed to pathological and took over my entire life.
The operators of FOBTs / online gambling sites are equally guilty of doing the minimum for responsible gambling policy in order to maintain the status quo with regards to regulation to prevent gambling harm. The reason for this is quite simple, problem gamblers are making huge profits for the industry.
I don't know exactly how much I've lost over the years but it runs into multiple hundreds of thousands of pounds racked up on debt. The impact on health though is perhaps even more stark. At the very least the impact to one's health after decades of having your mood driven by wins / losses from gambling should not be understated. At its worst problem gamblers feel completely alone, and a burden on society, leading in the very worst cases to suicide.
Once an addict, always an addict and the problem with gambling for addicts is the sheer amount of opportunity to gamble. Its driven into your face by TV adverts, constant bonus promotion emails, SMS messages, high street bookmakers etc. It's literally everywhere.
As a problem gambler I can do my best to be strong and remind myself of the misery it causes me, the pain it causes my family and friends, but is it fair that the industry just bombards me with offers / adverts for gambling but without taking sufficient steps to protect me as a problem gambler who doesn't want to relapse?
The answer to the opportunity to gamble is very simple. Cut it off.
1. Online gambling:
Change the law to require banks on request (by the problem gambler) to block Merchant Category Card (MCC) 7995 gambling transactions. The banks already have the procedure in place to do this as online gambling is illegal already today in some jurisdictions.
2. FOBTs:
Implement a self exclusion database. (by operator or national self exclusion database funded by industry)
Install card readers on all FOBTs with swipe cards issued to customers on request. During log-on the system will authenticate the card against the self exclusion database to check that the user of the card has not self excluded themselves. Any payout requires ID cross checked against the card owner.
Taking just these two steps will almost eradicate the opportunity for a self excluded problem gambler to have a relapse.
Thanks for reading.
Anthony
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