The question of problem gamblers anonymity
14th February, 2008
In contrast to Quebec, which released the reports with account details of problem gamblers, Ontario’s lottery corporation decided to leave their reports hidden from the public eye.
Teresa Roncon, a spokeswoman for Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, explained why they made the decision to keep the details private. "That stuff holds a lot of personal information," she stated.
She said that until Wednesday the officials did not even think about making the reports of major medical incidents public.
Until Wednesday, when Loto-Quebec were asked to give details of the incidents to do with gambling, such as suicides and other incidents to do with gambling, the company wasn’t even going to release those.
Initially they felt it was unnecessary to make such information available on a large scale, but after the long court battle, they had to give up and give out the facts. Now they have gradually released the information about such major incidents that occurred as a result of compulsive/problem gambling.
The suicide problem due to the gambling habit is a huge issue everywhere. Just as an example, there were 47 gambling-related suicides from 2001 until 2006.
One man got so bad with his compulsion that he started nicking money from work to support his obsession and after losing his job, drowned himself seeing no other way out.
