Responsible Gambling Education Must Start In The Classroom, Not The Casino
It's time to shift from ineffective adult outreach to school-based education to address the risks of addiction
Hey everyone, it’s the American Gaming Association’s Responsible Gaming Education Month! Gather around the campfire so we can talk about responsible … gaming.
See, already, I’m hitting a bit of a roadblock. Gaming? Gaming works, of course, but it’s pretty broad. I mean, betting on football is “gaming.” But so is playing Super Mario Bros. Or Chutes and Ladders. Or Tiddlywinks.
It’s really gambling we’re talking about, right? Yeah. That’s the word. That’s the real deal.
Like, gaming is “workforce reduction,” while gambling is “your ass got fired.”
See? Same same but different.
So if I were put in charge of the AGA’s Responsible Gaming Education Month, I’d immediately rebrand it to Responsible GAMBLING Education Month. The capital letters were intentional. Heck, I might even go a step further …
Responsible m*****r-(bleeping) (G_ddamn) GAMBLING Education month.
There. That does it. That’s an attention grabber. Cut and print.
I’ve got issues
In case you’re not picking up what I’m laying down, I have a lot of issues with the current state of the responsible gambling world, be it AGA’s monthlong nonsense or the little “RG” buttons found on apps to everything else in-between.
Honestly, my biggest problem isn’t even the dumb gaming-gambling thing — it’s another word in the title of AGA’s program, namely the word “education.”
Because we are not educating people on responsible gambling. We are triaging them after the fact. Sure, there’s all these big responsible gambling talks and responsible gambling months and outreach and whatnot, but show me a 54-year-old gambler — I’ll use myself as an example here — who is actively digesting such nuggets like the AGA’s “Play smart from the start” and “Act intentionally.”
Please. When I’m building a parlay that includes a -300 favorite in an Estonian table tennis match just to juice the odds a bit more, I am not, in any way, playing smart and acting intentionally. And all the current “education” in the world isn’t going to change that.
No change
Adults, in my experience, are not the target audience for education of any sort. We have already been educated. We are set in our ways, more or less. You know — leopard, spots, old dogs, new tricks, that kind of thing.
Way I see it, if the gambling industry and assorted stakeholders — mostly including the same legislators who saw fit to bring legal gambling, in any form whatsoever, to their states — were actually serious about responsible gambling, they would take most of the money earmarked for RG and dump it into the school systems.
Gambling — its benefits, its risks, its upsides, its downsides — should be taught right alongside everything else that is fun but comes with downsides.
We teach teenagers about sex because sex can be great … and sex can ruin your life. We teach them about alcohol because drinking can be fun … and drinking can ruin your life. We teach them how to drive because cars are fun (and useful) … and they’re also capable of killing you.
Somehow, though, gambling — now sitting on the phone in every kid’s pocket — is supposed to be handled by … osmosis, I guess.
States roll in
Some states are finally realizing how important this is. Virginia now requires public schools to teach kids about gambling and its addictive potential. Maryland’s new health program folds gambling into the mix — defining it to include sports betting, fantasy sports, online gambling and even loot boxes — while Michigan’s updated high school health standards specifically call for students to recognize the signs of gambling addiction and know how to seek help.
Massachusetts has gone more of the prevention program route, putting money into gambling education aimed at kids and teenagers, while lawmakers in New York and New Jersey are pushing bills that would put gambling instruction directly into school health classes.
In other words, a few states have apparently reached the radical conclusion that maybe we should teach kids what a point spread is before FanDuel does.
It’s a good start.
But the rest of the country needs to get it together, and the gambling industry should be leading the charge.
Simply put: You cannot expect any adult who is not a responsible gambler to all of a sudden become a responsible gambler because of a stupid RG badge on their gambling app or due to a monthlong, half-baked outreach program.
If we were serious about preventing problem gambling, we would teach the kids all about it. Basically, the same gym teacher who got dragooned into teaching kids about sex should also have to brush up on how to calculate expected value.
Jeff Edelstein is a longtime columnist, reporter, radio host, and fantasy sports aficionado, not necessarily in that order. He lives in New Jersey with his family.
