Gambling is “getting to be a younger activity”, Ruderman observed. The US is now headed into more of a gambling addiction quagmire, if not crisis When Keith Whyte, executive director at the National Council on Problem Gambling, asked a room of 40 17-year-old boys in Virginia earlier this year how many had a sports betting app on their phone, 36 hands rose.

While you are required to be 21 to bet on sports in most states in which it is legal, or 18 to take part in fantasy contests in much of the US, underage activity is a cause of mounting unease. “This is the first generation where this is normal.” Smartphones “made all avenues available to all people”, said Brad Ruderman, of the Beit T’Shuvah treatment center in Los Angeles, California. Access to legal gambling, once confined to casinos and racetracks, now sits in millions of pockets across the country. Placing a bet in the US has never been easier. “More and more younger clients” – aged 25 and under – are seeking treatment, he added.Īrnie Wexler, a counselor, has not seen anything like this before. “Calls to gambling helplines in most states in America are up, by sheer numbers,” said Timothy Fong, co-director of the gambling studies program at UCLA. Hundreds of calls from concerned relatives each year have heightened fears in the state that problem gambling is sweeping through a new generation. Requests for support through New Jersey’s helpline more than doubled over the ensuing years, as the legal market ballooned.

Ironically, New Jersey was the state that led the charge for the legalization of sports betting and, in 2018, successfully convinced the supreme court to overturn a decades-old federal law that prohibited the state from legalizing sports betting. “There’s a lot of kids that are gambling,” said Felicia Grondin, executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey.

What does the new gambling law mean