Gambling goes back millennia, but today’s proliferation of mobile phones has transformed it into a nearly ubiquitous global commercial enterprise, with looming public health implications. “You’ve got your casino in your pocket 24-7,” observes Harvard Kennedy School professor of the practice of public management Malcolm Sparrow, who specializes in the regulation of public harms.
Gone are “all of the normal impediments and obstacles to gambling, such as place restrictions.” Sparrow is co-author of a recent Lancet report which estimates that worldwide, 46 percent of adults (approximately 2.3 billion people) and nearly 18 percent of adolescents (159.6 million youths between 10 and 19 years old) have gambled in the past year. Gambling is not like other leisure activities. It’s a “health-harming addictive behavior” that affects not only an individual’s well-being, points out an accompanying editorial, “but also their wealth and relationships, families and communities….”
