Online gambling is gaining popularity by Thai teenagers with latest finding by the Center for Gambling Studies showed 40% of them having gambling addiction experiences.
The findings of gambling addiction experiences among Thai teens under 20-years-old was revealed at a seminar entitled “How Thai Teenagers Could Live in Gambling (Risk) Societies.”
The seminar is aimed at sounding out views to educate the people and develop effective mechanism to keep the Thai societies off gambling.
This is necessary because online gambling is growing and expanding worldwide as gambling operators launched promotions to attract more customers on websites, Facebook, Line which are easy to access all the time.
At the seminar, it was revealed that 40% of Thai teenagers have gambling addiction experiences, while 60% of the Thai population said they learn to gamble when they were teenagers.
This indicated that teenagers are prone to gambling and therefore all sectors of the societies have to come out with practical measures to prevent teenagers to become new gamblers.
It agreed that the gambling problem and the need for prevention measures should be discussed as a national agenda.
Thai Health Promotion Foundation representative Manop Yaem-uthai suggested that the problem could not be resolved solely by one agency but need the media and the legal affairs to work together to resolve.
Meanwhile No Gambling Club Network activist Ms Suvanan Leelakachornjit said gambling in the digital world has now gone so far to the extent that it could not be resolved by every government in the past.
This prompted the need of the government to enforce the law strictly to shut down all gambling websites on all platforms, she said.
(Source:Thai PBS)