Dr. Crystal Fulton:

We specifically asked participants what they thought the Government should be responsible for, what it should do, what were the legislative needs and how they would like policies developed. Many of my comments reflect those answers. In addition, one of the major recommendations of the report was that there should be a unified plan and national strategy to deal with problem gambling and the harm that it causes not only to individuals but the much wider impact it has on families and communities. We recommended that. It would mean that Departments work together to facilitate addressing this problem.

Advertising is a much debated topic internationally because it provides a major means of promoting gambling opportunities and it was identified across our participant groups as a problem. They referred to the negative effects of multiple forms of gambling advertising. For someone in recovery from gambling addiction - and such a person might always be in recovery - he or she may be unable to extract gambling from the process of watching sports on television because he or she always associated them with each other. The ads on television and pop-up ads online were noted as things that made gamblers think about gambling, acted as triggers, hindered recovery and were problematic. Advertising could pop up online even when the recovering gambler was not looking at gambling sites so that needs to be considered.

Advertising of gambling on TV and in newspapers, especially where free bets are advertised, was considered problematic. Seeing the racing page in the newspaper or advertising on TV could trigger gambling behaviour for our participants. They had strong views on advertising in our study. They were very worried about young adults and people. They deemed gambling advertisements as potentially harmful to gamblers as well as recovering gamblers. The people who have the addiction and are trying to recover and others are at risk. Our participants were worried about both of those groups.