Gambling Addiction Isn’t Surging
A study published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine claims to reveal a surge in gambling addiction following the legalization of sports betting. But does a rise in internet searches for gambling terms mean there’s been an actual increase in gambling addiction?
After the Supreme Court struck down the Professional Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) in 2018, states were allowed to legalize gambling on sports—since then, 38 states and the District of Columbia have some form of legal sports betting. With the rise of legal sports betting, there’s been an explosion of articles, podcasts, and studies about the potential harms of legalization.
On the surface, the study from researchers at the University of California San Diego Qualcomm Institute and School of Medicine appears to lend weight to these concerns, showing a cumulative increase of 23 percent in internet searches nationwide, relative to a counterfactual model, for help with gambling addiction as measured from 2018 through June 2024. But contrary to the study’s press release, these results do not show a “surge in gambling addiction.”
The study itself doesn’t measure clinical outcomes like gambling disorders. While internet search trends can suggest many things, they don’t reveal intent, actions, or who is searching. For instance, the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG), the country’s premier organization tackling gambling addiction, runs a dashboard of incoming traffic to its helpline and makes clear on its website: “This data should not be used as a proxy to estimate problem gambling prevalence.”
The NCPG is right not to use these calls as a proxy for problem gambling, not least because a significant share of these calls are not going to be from problem gamblers seeking help but gamblers seeking help trying to place bets. After news breaks of legalization in a state, it’s not surprising to see interest in these services tick up. As ads for sports betting increase, so do those for gambling a
Article from Reason.com
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