Gambling Commission Announcement Disputed by DOC
23rd March, 2009
An announcement by the Gambling Commission was disputed late last week by the Department of Culture after reports found that arguments against online gambling used false facts.
The Gambling Commission published reports stating that problem gambling among the online gambling population was growing, and was a direct consequence of the increase in online casinos.
Some conservative politicians had also used these estimated results from the Gambling Commission to brand online casinos as damaging to the population, using the exaggerated results to defend calls for a restriction on advertising for online casinos and harder licensing requirements.
However the Department of Culture, preformed their own study and found that this was not the case. According to arbitrary figures from the Gambling Commission, problem gambling had increased by 7.4% but the DOC found that only 0.6% of the online gambling population was affected by problem gambling.
A spokesman from the DOC said, “There is no basis in fact for this claim and the reality is that levels of problem gambling have not risen since 1997, Whilst it is true that more people are gambling online, it does not necessarily follow that more are becoming problem gamblers."
By Rommon
