Funding: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t
Funding – for lots of things, but specifically for gambling addiction research and treatment – is a really thorny problem. I mean, it isn’t, or it shouldn’t be. But the reality is very different.
I remember seeing, with my own innocent eyes, a critic of the industry on Twitter (when it still was) saying how the industry should be paying toward research and treatment for gambling addiction. One week later, the same critic was saying how the industry should not be allowed anywhere near funding for treatment or research. Dawg, make your mind up. This is not a topic that needs emotional reactions, it needs hard logic. Or at least consistent logic. Or… well, any logic, because what I read was just bonkers.
It’s 2026, and it’s pretty easy to distance a contribution from the actual end goal or programme. It’s genuinely really simple to do. A donation, or contribution, can be given to an organisation for a specific reason; say, to research the occurrence of gambling addiction in the disabled population. Then the group that’s given the money steps away and waits for the research to be done and published, probably a few years later.
Why on earth...