The rise of online betting has led the commercial gambling industry to balloon worldwide, posing a significant threat to public health, according to a new report.
The report, published Thursday, comes from a public health commission on gambling convened by the medical journal The Lancet. The commission’s 22 members — academic experts from a dozen countries — reviewed existing studies and surveys on gambling’s prevalence, impacts and harms and determined that on a global scale, current regulations do not go far enough to protect the public and need to be strengthened.
“We’re not talking about people playing a game with cards around the table anymore,” said the commission’s epidemiology lead, Louisa Degenhardt, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
