I've said it before and I'll say it again: gambling is not a public health issue.
Gambling is not a public health issue. Never has been, never will be. Problem gambling is a mental health problem but not a public health problem. It is no more of a public health issue than depression, anxiety or standing on a piece of Lego in your bare feet. There may be things that the government could do to alleviate these problems, but that does not make them public health issues. For the term “public health” to be useful, it has to mean something more than the aggregated health conditions of a society. Pollution, contagious diseases and sewage are public health issues because they present risks that individuals cannot easily avoid through their own actions. The same cannot be said of putting a tenner on the 2.30 at Chepstow.
Obesity and smoking are routinely described as public health issues when they are nothing of the kind. The legal professor Richard E. Epstein pointed out twenty years ago that this misleading terminology is “designed to signal that state coercion is appropriate when it is not.” As I wrote last month, gospel temperance groups have reinvented themselves as ‘public health’ groups because that’s where the action is if you want something banned these days.
It is not a matter of semantics. Resources for genuine public health problems are limited and infectious diseases may flourish if money is diverted towards clamping down on the leisure pursuits of affluent westerners (yes, I’m looking at you, World Health Organisation). In any case, saying that something is a public health problem doesn’t make it any easier to solve. Indeed, it makes it more difficult to solve because it opens the door to a legion of clueless “public health professionals” and single-issue campaigners who bumble in waving their hammer and looking for another nail.
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