Hibai González
Serra Húnter Associate Professor at the Faculty of Information and Audiovisual Media of the University of Barcelona
The Lancet Public Health Commission's report on gambling is a document that accurately summarises the state of the relationship between the marketing of gambling products and the public health risks they pose.
The report argues for a robust position based on scientific evidence that argues for greater restrictions at all stages of marketing, from the design, pricing and conditions of sale, to the marketing and promotions of gambling products.
After more than two decades of hegemony of the ‘responsible gambling’ discourse, the report is emphatic in arguing for the need to abandon it. Responsible gambling has been a widely used perspective by the gambling industry which, in a nutshell, consists of placing the responsibility/blame for irresponsible behaviour on the consumer. According to this perspective, the existence of people with gambling problems is not a social problem but an individual reality, to be treated in a personalised way by medical specialists. The report rejects this perspective and argues for a public health approach, where the very restrictive medical concept of gambling disorder is extended to the concept of ‘gambling harm’, which offers a more community and societal view of all the negative externalities that gambling entails.
As a consequence, the responsibility lies not only with the ‘irresponsible’ individual, but with the confluence of the gambling industry and its regulators, who have to ensure consumer protection and the marketing of gambling products that do not pose a risk to public health.