It is a mistake to criminalise online gambling as we did with drugs

«It is a mistake to criminalise online gambling as we did with drugs»

By David Pere Martínez Oró

Have we observed a change among young people that indicates that there are fewer addictions related to substance use and more addictions related to technology?

‘No, far from it. There are different views that always emphasise the issue of addiction and problems. And that is why, in the light of the increase in online gambling, there have been morally moved voices, especially in the media, that convey this discourse, because talking about addictions, especially if they are sordid and Dantesque, gives a lot of mileage and generates a lot of clickbait. We have seen this with the case of fentanyl in recent years, for example. But no, we don’t have any indicators that would allow us to say that addiction has shifted from drug use to the digital world. It is true that the number of more experimental, recreational drug users is decreasing, but the percentage of people who have problems with drugs remains the same. Another thing is to talk about how the way in which people, especially young people, interact and relate to each other has evolved and changed, and it is clear that in leisure time, digital consumption has increased notably’.

In this onlineleisure time consumption , gambling, including sports betting, has become very popular among young people. Can we compare this phenomenon to that of drugs?

‘No, this is a big mistake. I see that the same mistakes are being made in dealing with this phenomenon as were made in the 1980s with the drugs problem. These are two totally independent phenomena, with a single common thread, which is that addiction can occur in both cases, but this represents a very small percentage of the population. Whatever this addiction is, because we are well aware that there is a whole epistemological discussion underlying the notion of addiction and its ethology, both in chemical addictions and in those of a more behavioural nature. We must always bear in mind that the notion of addiction applies to very few people; of the entire population that relates to drugs, and I am including coffee, tobacco and alcohol, only a small percentage become addicted; and the same thing happens with screens.

The same mistakes are being made in dealing with the phenomenon of online gambling as were made in the 1980s with the drug problem.

Moreover, there is a process of trivialisation of uses, which means that in certain contexts in which a person relates to screens, they can be successfully labelled as an addict, while in other contexts they cannot. Addiction is still a label, and when people have this label, they are very likely to end up behaving as expected because they have this label.

What are the mistakes we made in the face of the drug problem more than thirty years ago that we are now reproducing?

‘When I talk about falling into the same mistakes, I am talking about falling into stigmatisation, criminalisation and a purely individual approach, which sees the problem of this person from the door lock, when there is a context that catalyses, that facilitates the appearance of these behaviours that we could call maladaptive, that generate problems in their daily lives. A less biomedical, less psychiatric and more social and community-based approach could give us better results, as we have seen with drugs. When the phenomenon was approached from a community perspective, with a comprehensive view of the subject in his or her context, we began to have better results. And, above all, not to work in a Manichean dichotomy of ‘addiction’ or ‘non-addiction’. There may be other intermediate stages, because I believe that what is important is that people who relate to substances or screens do not cause them harm and can have a full, satisfactory life and can relate successfully, that they are not a satellite of this common risk practice that drugs or screens can be. What the discourse of criminalisation, alarm and disease does is immobilise us from effective prevention or intervention to minimise risks’.

A less biomedical, less psychiatric and more social and community-based approach could give us better results, as we have seen with drugs.

Behind sports betting games there is an industry that moves a lot of money, but can this not be an obstacle to tackling the problems that they can generate?

‘The organisation of our societies is shaped by industry. To begin with, the technology industry would be just as responsible as the gambling industry, because without it there is no digital gambling, and betting and gambling would not have boomed as it has since 2014, and especially since 2018. Of course, we live in a capitalist order in which everyone is trying to survive and make money, because money is the marker of social status for many people. We live to some extent in a plutocracy, and we have seen how the big transnationals have almost more power than states, and, moreover, they have no citizens to look after or shelter in case of distress, no territories to guard, but they have a lot of power. In the case of games, it is just another industry.

But I always say the same thing: when it comes to gaming, we have a legal industry behind us. We can go and talk to them, they are there, not like in the drug industry, which is a criminal industry that solves its problems with violence, guns and deaths. The gambling industry, on the other hand, are gentlemen in suits, which it is important to keep in the strictest legality and to have them on our side. Yes, the gambling industry has something on its hands that can generate addiction, but so does the alcohol industry, and the car industry generates many more deaths than the gambling industry. In a social democratic state governed by the rule of law, all these industries have the same right to participate.

You talk about working together with the gambling industry instead of criminalising it. What do you think of those who propose illegalisation measures?

‘We should not be afraid of the industry, on the contrary, we have to win it as an ally so that it works to prevent the most sensible harm. As professionals and at a preventive level we can carry out many prevention strategies, because, in addition, we have them well identified, we know how they operate, we know what they earn… To deny the major and say that gambling should be outlawed is a serious mistake, because we have historical evidence that tells us that there have never been more children playing and more abuses associated with gambling than when gambling was illegal. Illegal gambling would bring us many more problems.

Now you can be gambling all day long: on the second division handball league in Australia, or in Burma, on sports you don’t even know what they are.

And then there is a B side that we must also take into account, and that is that this industry generates more than 90,000 million euros a year for the Spanish state. In other words, there is an economic argument that perhaps we consider more secondary, but which is the reality. To give an example, the National Lottery is what maintains the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA), especially the Christmas lottery, which brings in 10,000 million euros a year. We cannot lose sight of the fact that the scenario is what it is and that we must work in a preventive manner’.

And how do we do prevention, knowing the scenario as you say we do?

‘We must carry out quality prevention, which right now, after thirty years, we are starting to do on the issue of drugs, but not yet with gambling. What happens is that we come from a tradition of what I call information-based prevention: knowing the presentations, the routes, the consequences… But this is not prevention, this is information, which is necessary, but not enough to mobilise a change of self. Those of us who are psychologists know very well all the theories of behaviour modification, which are very complex. How can we expect a workshop or a talk on drugs or gambling to mobilise change in boys and girls?

How can we expect a workshop or a talk about drugs or gambling to mobilise change in boys and girls?

Quality prevention takes time, you are not going to change behaviour with talks, flyers, posters and workshops. Moreover, you have to certify that what you are doing is really preventive, and you can only know this through evaluation systems, which are not being carried out. For example, in gambling, a programme would have to be designed with a series of activities that reinforce abstinence practices, which in the school context would have to consist of about twenty sessions or be integrated directly into the school curriculum. But we are a long way from this scenario. I believe that we must reconvert prevention, as is already being done in many European countries, and as the Generalitat de Catalunya is beginning to do, promoting more effective prevention actions’.

Why do we like to gamble and gamble so much?

‘There is a very interesting anthropological answer. Johan Huizinga, a Dutch philosopher and anthropologist from the first third of the twentieth century, makes a whole study of gambling as a cultural practice, and says that gambling is inherently part of the human condition. Humans since the dawn of time have had to learn to survive in a hostile context in order to feed ourselves, seek shelter, reproduce and continue to survive as a species, but in this struggle for survival, play reveals itself to be capital, it is part of the intrinsic culture of the human condition. And the struggle for survival and to be able to live is as human as playing. And in the case of gambling, it is about tempting fate, tempting risk with just a few coins; you take a risk, but a very banal one, because you have a cushion, you lose the money and that’s it. The problem is when people spend more money than they can spend, and what was a cushion becomes a spider’s web. It is also intrinsic for humans to take risk: living is a risk.

In the case of sports betting, what has changed since we used to play the Quiniela at home as something fun and even collective? What is the dimension of this phenomenon?

‘Sports betting has existed since ancient Mesopotamia and is intrinsic to the practice of many sports. The betting game was the first bet that overcame one of the dimensions of classical betting, which is the question of the chronotope, i.e. time and space. Before the quiniela, in order to bet you had to go to a certain place, on a certain day and at a certain time, otherwise you had no chance to bet. The Quiniela was the first betting game that didn’t require you to go to the place, although you could only bet once a week. Of course, now with technology we have a casino on our phone, well, more like 30,000 casinos. And now you can be gambling all day long: on the second division handball league in Australia or in Burma, on sports you don’t even know what they are. And you’d be amazed at the millions of sports that are being offered. The technological revolution has made it possible that any day and at any time, people, without leaving the house, without having to wash themselves, without needing to interact with anyone, can be betting. It is not the fact of gambling, but the opportunity, which used to be very limited and now is no longer. This is the great challenge that the issue of gambling creates for us.

This is the scenario, but we should not be alarmed, because alarm sometimes leads to very irrational responses.