Prohibition

There is a plan to shift responsibility for gambling law from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to the Department of Health.

It would redesignate betting as an illness, not a recreation.

The policy is justified by an academic study, which has been published in The Lancet.

Proposals are to ban all gambling-related advertising and all sponsorship of any sporting event on which legal gambling is possible.

Once gambling is established as a sickness, it can be treated the same as another product, tobacco. All branding, colours and logos will disappear. Spread betting on sport will be banned, as will in-play betting.

The sale of alcohol on premises where gambling is possible will become illegal, tax on betting would be reintroduced and would rise by more than inflation each year, and the hours that gambling websites operate would be restricted.

In order to strike a legal bet, personal financial details would have to be supplied.

The study was compiled with the help of eighty-two anonymous people, referred to as experts. Requests for the names have been denied.

Dan Waugh, writing in the Racing Post, has called it a ‘Prohibitionist Charter’.

The long-term achievement of actual Prohibition, enforced in 1919 America, was to strengthen the Mafia. Thirty-five million citizens were criminalised overnight. Bootlegging, and the wonderfully named ‘speakeasies’ (illegal drinking dens) flourished, as did organised crime. When President Roosevelt rescinded the laws, what was left was a series of highly organised gangs who, with alcohol no longer against the law, turned their talents to narcotics.

This study, the 9000 words of which may be read HERE...

… and which claims impartiality and scientific exactitude, makes no reference to any social consequence of its recommendations being enacted.

It takes as its premise that all gambling is a malady. ‘Calls for a public health approach to tackle harmful gambling are now increasing’, it says.

No evidence is offered that there is public demand for the state to interfere further in the lives of private citizens.

‘A whole-population continuum-of-harm perspective, which includes universal and targeted prevention and treatment initiatives and the modification of the social, commercial and environmental determinants of health inequalities, is currently being called for’.

Who it actually is calling for such things is not mentioned.

In order to dismiss them as ‘unhealthy’, the study notes the arguments advanced for leaving things as they are, for example that the gambling industry behaves responsibly, that harm arises from individual choice, that personal accountability is key, and that the protection of the population is best achieved voluntarily.

This is opinion. No science is advanced in support.

The National Lottery is not referenced, nor are sanctions against it proposed. There are 200,000 child lottery addicts. According to this paper, going to the races and having a fiver each way is evidence of sickness, while spending money on scratch cards is not.

The government earns £5 billion per year from the lottery.