SIMON THOMAS
PARTICIPATION IS NOT DISORDER At the same time, DSM-5 gambling disorder remains a relatively rare mental health condition, affecting around 0.2 per cent of the adult population in Great Britain. This is the current official statistic. The overwhelming majority of people who gamble do so moderately and without experiencing harm.
Indeed, the research literature points to a range of psychosocial benefits associated with recreational gambling, including socialisation, mental stimulation and challenge.
Professor Per Binde, the Swedish social anthropologist, has described the process of betting on horseraces – studying form and analysing odds – as an exercise in problem-solving, similar to completing a crossword.
One well-known study compared casino games to reading a whodunnit or watching a thriller – activities grounded in suspense, uncertainty and surprise. I see these effects every day and night in my own business. It is obvious to those who live in the real world that adults engage in activities such as gambling, drinking, eating out and shopping because they derive enjoyment and utility from them. Humans have been gambling for recreation in every part of the world and in every era of history. The bottom line is simple. Participation in an activity and disordered participation in an activity are not the same thing.
Drinking wine is not alcoholism. Using the internet is not internet addiction. Having sex is not the same thing as having a sexual disorder.
Yet increasingly, this distinction is being blurred.
THE PUBLIC HEALTH TURN Three years ago, officials at Britain’s public health agency, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID), published 81 recommendations for gambling reform.
Bans featured prominently.
The paper called for restrictions on gambling advertising and marketing, limits on products, restrictions on sports betting and annual tax increases above inflation. Closer to home for me, OHID also proposed banning the sale of alcohol in casinos, bingo clubs and racecourses. And even called for plain packaging for gambling products.
But let’s think about that for a moment. Under these proposals, I would not be permitted to tell potential customers about my business. I would not be able to serve the wine we drink over dinner in my restaurants. Machines and roulette wheels would be presented in monochrome. Traditional playing cards featuring the Queen of Hearts and Ace of Spades could effectively become illegal.
So while the objective of reducing harm is entirely laudable, the problem is that public health increasingly appears to view all gambling as inherently harmful.
The comparison repeatedly drawn is with tobacco. But gambling is not tobacco. The vast
majority of people who gamble do so safely and responsibly. The same cannot be said of smoking.
FROM PROTECTION TO SURVEILLANCE
The most worrying development is not any individual proposal. It is the direction of travel. Public health thinking increasingly treats gambling not as a legitimate leisure activity enjoyed by millions of adults, but as a behaviour that requires continuous intervention and control. Our regulator has now introduced a system of financial risk checks requiring some adults to provide bank statements and tax returns if they wish to spend more than the national average on gambling.
Take a step back from gambling for a moment and consider what principle is being established here?
Once society accepts that adults must demonstrate they can afford one legal leisure activity, why should that principle stop there? Compulsive buying behaviour is significantly more prevalent than gambling disorder so should Amazon customers undergo affordability checks before making purchases? Should Tesco assess customers’ risk of alcohol misuse based on the contents of their weekly shopping basket? These examples sound absurd, but they follow precisely the same logic.
THE BLACK MARKET PROBLEM There is another consequence of this approach which is that over-regulation does not eliminate demand but simply changes where demand goes. A short walk from the Hippodrome will take you to unlicensed gambling venues operating completely outside the regulatory framework. Unlike licensed operators, these businesses provide none of the consumer protections, compliance systems or safeguards that exist within
the regulated sector and are frequently linked to wider criminal activity and organised gangs. This matters because the Gambling Act 2005 was carefully constructed around three objectives: protecting the vulnerable; ensuring gambling is conducted fairly and openly and keeping crime out of gambling. Over-regulation risks undermining all three.
THE BIGGER QUESTION I enjoy my work. Every year we welcome around 1.5 million visitors through the doors of the Hippodrome. People come for blackjack and roulette, for sport, entertainment, food, drinks and nights out with friends. These activities bring enjoyment, excitement and pleasure. But the threat I have described is not confined to gambling.
The same mindset increasingly targets what we eat, drink and consume, and how we choose to spend our leisure time and money. Just as public health has adopted a tobacco model for gambling, there are those who would happily apply similar principles elsewhere. I remain an optimist, but I believe it’s important to recognise what is at stake. The question is not whether gambling can cause harm. It can.
The question is whether public policy should be built around the experience of the overwhelming majority who participate responsibly, or the minority who do not. How we answer that question will shape not only the future of gambling, but the future of consumer freedom more broadly.
ASK SIMON!
If you’d like Simon to answer your question, email Matt now:
casinointernationalmatt@gmail.com
JUNE 2026 13
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