The British Medical Journal has published another little rant about gambling from two academics of no fixed ability. It’s kind of fascinating watching the ‘public health’ racket try to get its grubby little hands on this issue. They clearly realise that there is money in it and they instinctively hate the activity, but they know nothing about it and can’t be bothered to learn.
The article is titled ‘How we can solve the crisis in UK gambling policy’ but it contains not a single policy proposal, nor even a description of the problem (sorry, ‘crisis’) that they are supposedly trying to solve. Normally, the authors of opinion pieces like this have a particular policy in mind - usually a ban of some sort - and they cite a bit of modelling or some other quack science that suggests the policy will work. They will editorialise a bit about how dreadful a particular industry is and how weak the government has been and how everyone is going to die of liver cirrhosis or heart disease by 2030 unless something is done, but the article will at least have a purpose.
This one is rather different. Insofar as it has a purpose, it is to solidify the idea that something must be done and that people in ‘public health’ should decide what that thing is at some point in the future. But it is completely devoid of ideas, contains no insight at all and simply copies and pastes rhetoric used in similar articles about other lifestyle issues, most obviously smoking. As such, it is modern ‘public health’ academia stripped down to its essence, a load of empty waffle and pompous clichés.
The Gambling Act 2005 was harmful from its inception. Designed to make the UK the centre of the online gambling industry [eh?! - CJS], it defined people, not products, as the problem, and required the regulator and local authorities to “aim to permit” gambling. A public health approach cannot be “bolted on” to legislation that is based on completely opposing logic. A public health approach requires a transformational shift.
Concerning gaps can be found in the evidence base around gambling, including a lack of research focusing on characterising the true nature, scale, and cost of harms to those affected and society. These lacunas, favourable to industry, are products of a system where, for decades, the industry has been the dominant funder. Research programmes are fragmented and much of the output continues to focus on individuals and not the industry. Until the silo of gambling research is breached, and academics are required to compete alongside other areas of public health for funding, it is likely that the same conditions will endure.
The authors then lay out “four critical areas”. They have already mentioned three of them: how industry funding supposedly shapes gambling research, how problem gambling shouldn’t be seen as an issue of personal responsibility, and the alleged problems with industry-funded research (again). They do not provide any evidence that these are genuine problems and I would like to see them in a room with academics such as Mark Griffiths and Jonathan Parke who have been studying gambling for years (sometimes with industry grants) and see if they will tell them to their faces that they are corrupt - which, when you boil it down, is what they’re insinuating.
Which brings us to our fourth and most important point. If, in the absence of industry derived funds, the NHS cannot afford to manage the burden of harm caused by the way we regulate gambling then the solution is not more funding, but a change to the regulations.
It is extraordinary that we welcome industry funding for “problem gambling” clinics. Imagine if instead of adopting effective tobacco control policy, including measures to protect policymaking from industry influence, we had praised tobacco companies for funding cancer treatment services.
If we, as health professionals and policymakers, fail to call for a new Act, and allow the current approach to gambling regulation to be preserved under the guise of “public health,” we are part of the problem, not the solution.
We thank Mark Petticrew for his thoughtful and insightful feedback during the drafting of the opinion piece.
The end of a brilliant 2 day workshop, finalising the recommendations for The Lancet Public Health Commission on gambling- coming in 2024! Thanks to @TheLancetPH for hosting and our amazing commissioners for flying in to make it happen. @GlaGamRes @UofGSocSci pic.twitter.com/jrowbCQkC6
— Heather Wardle (@shwardle) January 12, 2024
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