Psychologist says gambling age limits won’t address addiction risks

Clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Ger­ard Bap­tiste is not par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned that re­mov­ing re­stric­tions on re­mote gam­bling will lead to a surge in gam­bling ad­dic­tion among young peo­ple.

Bap­tiste said he was await­ing the fi­nal leg­is­la­tion be­fore mak­ing a de­fin­i­tive as­sess­ment. How­ev­er, he said the fo­cus should be less on the le­gal gam­bling age and more on ad­dress­ing why peo­ple turn to po­ten­tial­ly harm­ful be­hav­iours.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Bap­tiste said gam­bling was al­ready read­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble in sev­er­al forms, in­clud­ing lot­tery out­lets and gam­ing ma­chines.