Sunday, November 26, 2006

Up to one million people a year could become hooked on internet gambling
because of a new law, a Birmingham addiction expert has claimed. Professor
Jim Orford, of Birmingham University, believes the Government is being
"naive" and "playing dice" with people's health over its plans to liberalise
gambling laws. The Gambling Act 2005, which will fully come into force next
September, relaxes some laws on the activity. Prof Orford told the BBC's
Panorama programme: "Gradually we're going to realise it's a much bigger
problem than we thought. "More people are going to know friends and family
members who've got problems. Health authorities are going to be under
pressure to provide treatment. "We could be talking about a million people
affected by it in any one period of 12 months, and that begins to put it on
a par with drug addiction problems." An average of 5.8 million people a
month visited online gambling sites between April and September, according
to the programme. In May alone there were more than six million visitors to
online gambling sites, the research by internet media and marker research
company Nielsen/Net Ratings found. Independent research commissioned by the
Government claims that there are only one million regular UK online
gamblers, the programme said. Minister for Sport Richard Caborn told
Panorama: "We have, I believe, acted responsibly in bringing an Act on to
the statute book which has three basic principles on which it is based;
protecting the vulnerable, keeping it crime-free, and making sure that those
who have a bet will be paid out and it'll be a fair bet. "That is what it is
predicated on because we believe that gambling is now part of our leisure
industry."