he told CBC News on Monday<\/a>.<\/p>\n“The typical story that I see in the clinic is a 13- or 14-year-old boy who has borrowed dad’s credit card, or mom’s credit card, engaged in some online wagering and lost a significant amount of money.”<\/p>\n
Kelly says there are also other associated harms that come with gambling issues.<\/p>\n
“We know that substance use goes up, we know that other criminality or delinquency increases as well,” he said, adding that there can also be an increase in suicidality\u00a0associated with gambling behaviours.<\/p>\n
WATCH|\u00a0Better gambling regulation needed to protect children, doctors say:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1757782167_506_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Better gambling regulation needed to protect children, doctors say<\/p>\n
An editorial published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) on Monday warns gambling advertising is affecting young Canadians, even if they aren\u2019t being specifically targeted. Family physician Dr. Shannon Charlebois, who is also CMAJ\u2019s medical editor and co-published the editorial, explains why children are particularly vulnerable to gambling ads and why it must be regulated on a federal level.<\/p>\n
Charlebois\u00a0says the brains of children and teens are still developing and the constant exposure to gambling messages normalizes harmful behaviours they can carry into adulthood.<\/p>\n
“What’s very dangerous about this for children is that it’s normalizing a known harmful behaviour during an impressionable stage. And it’s really appealing in particular to youth who are genetically, biologically predisposed to enjoy risk-taking,” she said.<\/p>\n
Charlebois says Deacon’s\u00a0bill to regulate sports betting advertising\u00a0would be a good start to addressing the problem.<\/p>\n
‘It’s just everywhere’<\/p>\n
Timothy Dewhirst is a professor and senior research fellow in marketing and public policy at the University of Guelph’s Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics.<\/p>\n
He says ads for sports betting are everywhere right now.<\/p>\n
“I’m a sports fan and so when I’m watching games on TV that are broadcast, it’s just filled with advertisements\u00a0for sports betting companies,” he said.<\/p>\n
“You see it on\u00a0the jerseys of players. You see it when there’s sports updates of other games that the commentators are presenting…There’s ads on the field or\u00a0on the ice rink… It’s just everywhere.”<\/p>\n
He says parlay bets are especially concerning. Parlay is a type of bet that is connected to two or more other bets, most commonly in sports betting. All the wagers have to win together for the parlay bet to win. If any of the wagers lose, the entire parlay loses.<\/p>\n
“You can imagine with all of these opportunities to bet, of how one could get in a financial hole very quickly,” he said.<\/p>\n
“One\u00a0recommendation I would make is to be eliminating these parlay bets of where it shouldn’t be so rapid fire.”<\/p>\n
He says it’s important to consider the role of evolving technology.<\/p>\n
“People can be betting from their smartphone and adolescents virtually all have smartphones now too. It just allows for a more rapid rate of gambling and sports betting taking place that we wouldn’t have seen. In the past, one had to maybe go to an actual retailer or go to [Las] Vegas to be placing\u00a0such bets.”<\/p>\n
LISTEN|\u00a0How kids are getting hooked on sports betting:<\/p>\n
The CurrentHow kids are getting hooked on sports betting<\/p>\n
Gambling logos, ads and chatter are everywhere during hockey broadcasts, despite the harms that can come with betting. Raffaello Rossi of the University of Bristol has the numbers on just how much we were exposed to sports betting during the Stanley Cup playoffs. He hopes that Canada will eventually follow the lead of the UK and other European nations and bring in strict regulations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Independent senator from Waterloo region is hoping to push her legislation against sports betting ads forward after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64,63,137,514,515],"class_list":{"0":"post-140598","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}