Society normalising underage gambling, other illegal activities
It’s not just a fun thing, it’s a way to earn some money for the majority of the population, but one-tenth of the population is going to end up with a gambling addiction.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR of RISE Life Management Services, Sonita MorinAbraham, is particularly bothered by the ingrained behaviour of under-age gambling and other illegal activities that are widely accepted as normal and consistent with regular child-rearing activities.
She believes there needs to be wide-scale, sustained intervention to help both the child victim and caregiver recognise the potentially damaging impact of what for many is now a routine behaviour.
“Maas Richard needs to understand that by sending his grandson to buy the ticket, what he’s doing is really sending his grandchild, who he is supposed to love, into the possibility of gambling because once he’s doing it for his grandfather, he’s
then going to do it for himself. That’s how we all start, and then that can lead to a very serious addiction,” she warned during a Gleaner Editors’ Forum last Wednesday at the media house’s North Street, Kingston, offices.
“It’s not just a fun thing, it’s a way to earn some money for the majority of the population, but one-tenth of the population is
going to end up with a gambling addiction.”
For Joy Crawford, co-founder and director of programmes and training at Eve for Life, the normalisation of child gambling needs to be addressed with urgency in a comprehensive, sustainable manner.
“Gambling is like most other behaviours that we see in our society that we would consider harmful or addictive, or so that we have created a culture around something that we know has a negative impact and we have made it normal. So, for me, for example, the issue revolves around how we have turned what we called the dirty old man into a sugar-daddy. We have developed into a society that we have normalised so many negative behaviours and habits from kids from they were small,” Crawford lamented.