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Canada should enact robust, efficient laws to guard youth from playing promoting. Minors are struggling harms from drawback playing regardless of age restrictions, argue authors in an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Affiliation Journal).
Since 2021, advertisements for sports activities betting have saturated sports activities broadcasts, continuously seen by youngsters. Playing is normalized as a pure a part of spectatorship at a younger age. Even earlier than single-game sports activities betting was legalized, a 2019 survey of Canadian college students in grades 7–12 discovered about 4% of scholars expressed the urge to gamble regardless of their very own adverse penalties, and a couple of% had signs of playing dependancy.
Smartphones solely make the issue worse.
“The legalization of online gambling (iGaming) in Ontario in 2022 turned any smartphone into a betting platform, compounding existing epidemics of technology and social media use addiction,” writes Dr. Shannon Charlebois, medical editor, CMAJ, with Dr. Shawn Kelly, a pediatrician and addictions medication specialist, CHEO and the College of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario.
Downside playing in minors is linked to an elevated danger of suicide, substance use dysfunction, theft, weapons use, and assault. Most alarming is the elevated danger of suicide, with a UK research exhibiting a nine-fold danger in males and virtually five-fold in females with drawback playing. A research of Norwegians from 2008 to 2021 discovered that suicide was the primary reason for loss of life in folks with drawback playing.
“Allowing glaring and ubiquitous promotion of sports betting is a willful mortgage of Canada’s future to the interests of private profit and tax revenue. Canadian jurisdictions should act to eliminate all commercials that promote sports betting during broadcasts where minors are likely to see them.”
The authors name for the federal authorities to start by expediting Invoice S-211, which is able to permit improvement of a nationwide framework to manage sports activities betting promoting and nationwide requirements to guard individuals who will be negatively affected.
Extra info:
Defending Canada’s youth from the dangers of publicity to playing promoting, Canadian Medical Affiliation Journal (2025). DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.251227
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Canadian Medical Affiliation Journal
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Canada should defend youth from sports activities betting promoting, say specialists (2025, September 8)
retrieved 8 September 2025
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