Congresswoman concerned about gambling addiction in the US

The United States is in the grips of rapid expansion in the sports gambling sector. Now, the same talking points have been taken up by proponents of iGaming and online casino legalization. In a word, the US is a gambling nation that is exploring new avenues to satiate the growing appetite for this specific market, curb the black market and drive windfall to state coffers.

Yet, one aspect of all of this may have been overlooked as gambling addiction is now becoming a graver issue across the nation. States such as Ohio have gone all-in, introducing tools such as Gamban to empower residents to fight back. Washington D.C. on the flipside has chosen to pull the plug on responsible gambling funding.

Congresswoman Andrea Salinas has recently told The Guardian, a newspaper that thunderously declared it would not accept gambling advertisements and has been generally hawkish of the industry, that an unchecked gambling boom could exacerbate mental health issues, with specificity to addiction.

Therefore, Salinas argued, operators must carry the onus and responsibility of rising addiction levels, and they should be the ones who bear the financial cost as well. Her comments and The Guardian interview come at a time when the United States is seriously considering introducing a law that allows it to direct money from operators to tackling gambling addiction, but also ensuring that prevention and intervention are also worked on, as well as research into understanding the condition and it triggers better.

The American Gaming Association, generally a staunch supporter of anything with the Responsible Gambling label in it, has said it would not support the idea in its current form, as it saw the way of funding this otherwise noble cause with money that would undermine the competitiveness of operators in the United States, and make them lose more ground to black market counterparts which have not been stopped by the fact they don’t own a license to operate in certain states.

Salinas has been critical of the way that people are now able to access gambling products non-stop. "But the access to these applications for sports betting has taken us in a harmful direction. Nearly 7m Americans are struggling with the gambling addiction," she explained, highlighting the number of people who are already struggling with addiction.

Salinas is also worried that if states and the federal government sleepwalks through the rapid legalization of online gambling products the nation would wake up in a future where problem gambling has accumulated to a point where it would be too costly or near impossible to fix.

The forthcoming discussions will be split between advocates for safer gambling who welcome the so-called Grit Act, and Congresswoman Salinas on the one hand, and operators from the sector who may be a little reluctant to endorse the measure as it currently stands for various qualms they harbor. It’s both parties’ responsibility to convince the other of its rightness, however.

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