Thursday, January 11, 2007

Officials have found that age limits on the use of gambling machines are
rarely enforced in Finland. Finnish law forbids children under the age of 15
from using slot machines. Young players are rarely asked how old they are,
and it is even rarer for them to be asked to prove their age. It is very
unusual for anyone to stop a child from playing fruit machines, video poker,
or other types of gambling machines. More than half of Finnish children aged
12 to 17 surveyed had spent money on gambling of some kind in the previous
year. Over half of all 14-year-olds had gambled, and more than a third of
those younger than that also said that they had played. Gambling machines
were the favourite game of chance. These are followed by scratch cards and
the weekly Lotto lottery. One in five play at least once a week. The
gambling habits of young Finns and the poor monitoring of age limits were
revealed in two separate studies conducted by the Taloustutkimus market
research company on behalf of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. In
one study, children over the age of 15 who look younger than their years
were recruited to buy lottery tickets and play slot machines, and to observe
other young people playing the games. Only seven percent said that they had
been asked their age. Boys were asked for an ID much more frequently than
girls. Enquiries were made most frequently in kiosks, and those asking the
questions were usually personnel on the premises. The other study involved
telephone interviews to examine the gambling practices of children aged 12
to 17, the amounts of money that were spent on games, and opinions on
compulsive gambling. One in four of the young people surveyed said that they
had friends who gambled to the point of having a problem. The study
concluded that about 1.3 per cent of children aged 12 to 17 belonged to a
high-risk group of heavy gamblers. It is in this group that potential
compulsive gamblers can be found, for whom the habit can bring social,
economic, and health problems. One in ten young people in the study said
that they would like stop gambling, but felt that it might be difficult.