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Category: Opinion
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DraftKings Gift Cards Sold As ‘Financial Services’ At ‘National Drugstore’
A photo taken at a Massachusetts drugstore shows DraftKings gift cards displayed directly beneath a “Financial services” aisle sign. I wasn’t surprised in the slightest when I saw the photo posted by gambling harms researcher Dr. Nathan Smith on LinkedIn. After nearly 20 years covering the industry, almost nothing problematic about the way the online…
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Your Child Is Already Gambling. You Just Haven’t Been Told Yet.
Many parents have questions about whether their child is gambling. I have two perspectives on this, and neither lets me sleep well. One is professional. I’m a child and adolescent psychiatrist. I understand how developing brains learn reward, risk, and self-control. Adolescence is a period when reward sensitivity and sensation-seeking peak while cognitive control is…
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Dem Floats New Federal Online Gambling Tax—But Not For Addiction
Rahm Emanuel, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, proposes increasing the federal government’s dependency on online gambling, despite its known harms, which include elevated risks of suicide. Emanuel announced a plan he would presumably pursue should he take the White House to levy a new 10% federal tax on online gambling platforms and prediction markets…
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Online Sportsbooks Amass $48M War Chest For State Elections
A group of powerful online gambling companies has amassed at least $48 million to influence this election cycle at the state level. The spending could have a significant impact on public health efforts to rein in the state-sanctioned online sports betting industry. While potentially safer than offshore platforms and prediction markets, existing state regulation of…
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‘You’re A Sucker’: Lawmaker Tells Teen Sons To Avoid Betting Apps
Does betting make you a “sucker”? One prominent Kentucky politician thinks so. More and more people are thinking that legal betting apps are basically, as one former industry employee put it, “parasites with us in our pockets.” The State of Kentucky, on April 1, advanced legislation to modestly reform its online sports betting market. The…
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