March Madness: Does the Media Promote Gambling?
If you are doing a story on the NCAA Basketball Tournament, you might want
to look at betting on this event and the issue of compulsive gambling. I
wonder how many college students will have a bet on the games and whether or
not some athletes also have bets on the games as well. It is easier to
gamble than it is to buy cigarettes or a can of beer on college campuses all
over the country. The National Gambling Study Commission said that there are
"5 million compulsive gamblers and 15 million at risk in the U.S." Forty
eight percent of the people who gamble bet on sports. Get the real scoop:
Talk to Arnie Wexler who is one of the nation's leading experts on the
subject of compulsive gambling and a recovering compulsive gambler himself,
who placed his last bet on April 10, 1968. He has been involved in helping
compulsive gamblers for the last 38 years.Through the years, Wexler has
spoken to more compulsive gamblers than anyone else in America.
Arnie has spoken to students who gamble in college, day and night. They even
gamble during class, and it even goes on in high school lunch rooms.
According to a Harvard study a few years ago, 4.67 percent of young people
have a gambling problem. Experts tell us that the earlier a person starts to
gamble, the greater the risk of them becoming a compulsive gambler. In
another survey, 96 percent of adult male recovering gamblers stated that
they started gambling before the age of 14.
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