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Hello, my name is Stephen. I’m an addict... (The Times)

Monday, 17th September 2007

I have a piece in today's Times about the British Gambling Prevalence Study and problem gambling. Here's an extract:

The study is due to report that, of the 40 million of us who gamble, 2 per cent are “problem gamblers”; some 800,000 of the population.
Gambling can wreck lives. It can lead people into debt, into crime and into the gutter. But so, too, can stamp collecting. So can missionary work. So, in fact, can anything, if pursued without sense and without the funds to support it. But I have yet to read about the social problems caused by stamp collectors who blow their budget on penny blacks.
This week’s report is a classic piece of scaremongering, based on defining its key term so widely as to render it meaningless. Problem gamblers are measured in such reports - there was one in 1999 that found that there were 300,000 of us - through the answers given to a series of questions. Have you ever chased your losses? Have you ever lied about the amount you have gambled? Have you ever gambled more than you intended? How often do you gamble?
Here’s my confession, and why I am one of the 800,000 so-called problem gamblers. My answer to all of those questions would, at some time, have been yes. When I was a schoolboy, I sometimes told my father that I had put on a 2p yankee - total cost 22p - when it had actually been a 5p yankee (55p). I have gone to the racecourse with a budget of £100 and blown £200. I have lost solidly for a week and, determined to get the money back, stuck far more on a nag than sense dictated and lost that, too. And - this presumably is the clincher - not only do I subscribe to Racing UK so that I can watch racing every day, I have also been known - horror of horrors - to have a bet every day.

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Joshua

September 17th, 2007 12:06pm

If you think you've got a problem with the ponies, you wait until you've been married for a while: "But Darling, I know these shoes were a teeny bit on the expensive side, but they're such good quality and they'll last simply ages. Besides, I actually saved us £500 as they were 50% off."

john moran

September 17th, 2007 12:53pm

onlyyou can say if you have a problem. "when your life has become unmanageable..."

cuffleyburgers

September 17th, 2007 4:56pm

Given that by this wonderful government's lights, you are a problem drinker if you drink half a bottle of chianti and a peg pf whisky per day, you are at risk of an agonising death from lung cancer if someone lights up in a car park 40 yds away; so I suppose we must all be problem gamblers, in fact I am surprised there are so few. But more seriously, all these problems are potentially serious, but the government's chosen tactic of trying to scare us as though we were all 4 yr olds, by essentially "criminalizing" normal behaviour, is just sickening, and tends to substract from the plight of those who really are in a desperately bad situation