Gambling addiction experts gather in Twin Cities to talk about sports betting risks

NINA MOINI: The rise of sports betting has made it easier to gamble using the phone in your pocket. That's true even in states like Minnesota, where sports betting is illegal. The situation has some researchers and advocates concerned that more young adults could fall into gambling addiction and/or debt.

Those concerns are the topic of a conference in the Twin Cities this Friday. The Minnesota Alliance on Problem Gambling is hosting the event. The group's executive director is Susan Sheridan Tucker, and she joins me now. Thanks so much for being here, Susan.

SUSAN SHERIDAN TUCKER: Thanks for the invitation.

NINA MOINI: We're also very happy to have Michelle Malkin, who's joining me from East Carolina University, where she's an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology. She's created tools to help students and counselors recognize when gambling becomes too risky. Thanks for being here as well, Michelle.

MICHELLE MALKIN: Pleasure. Thank you.

NINA MOINI: I'd love to start with you, Michelle. I'm wondering, what have you learned generally about sports betting among college students? I'm not very familiar here, but it's something that's pretty easy to do during that time where people are gaining some independence.

MICHELLE MALKIN: Yeah. So we actually know that sports betting is happening whether it's legal or not, that what we have found when we compare states that have not legalized and states that have, is that especially our male college students have been already gambling on sports at very high, risky ways and rates. And so legalization isn't the thing we really need to focus on. It's, how do we ensure that if they're going to gamble, they know how to gamble in lower risk ways? Because young individuals-- how to engage in gambling in a lower risk, healthier way.

NINA MOINI: And I know it's a good point they're talking about, the issue at the core, rather than legalization. But I do want to just establish for our listeners, Susan, what are the loopholes that allow people to bet on sports, regardless of the state law?

SUSAN SHERIDAN TUCKER: So people have the opportunity to go to offshore sites. And mostly when they're connecting to their sites, they really don't know that they're unregulated and offshore. And it's the unregulated sites that offer no protections for players, whereas regulated sites have some tools and because they're regulated, have to comply with payouts and basically keeping the game to comply with all the rules and regulations.

NINA MOINI: I wonder, Michelle, you talked a little bit about finding better ways or healthier ways for people to do betting or sports betting. You also have tools for recognizing that it's a problem in general. What are the gaps you're trying to fill? Or how would people get a hold of these tools that you're using?

MICHELLE MALKIN: Great question. Thank you. We actually have found that while we know that younger individuals that are emerging adults or college students are already engaging in gambling. We haven't done a good job of encouraging them to actually have the education needed to do so in a healthier way.

And so what we've done is create a college curriculum specific for undergraduate students. If they choose to gamble, here's what it looks like. Here's what a gambling-related harm looks like. And these are the need to know. If you want to gamble, it should be part of your entertainment budget. This is how to budget it in, things like that that we have done no work up to now in terms of ensuring that when individuals engage in the behavior, they know what it looks like if it goes too far.

The other thing is, is, we didn't have a really good screener to identify those students who were at risk. Because this is a perfect age to be doing harm reduction and prevention of gambling disorder, but we haven't done a good job of doing that. So we actually developed a new screener specifically for the ages of 18 to 24 that captures more people at risk, not just those people who actually already have gambling disorder, which is gambling addiction.

And then we've also created a curriculum for college counselors to have a certificate in order to help the student who may be in crisis, or maybe they're dealing with somebody else in their life having gambling issues. Because unfortunately, a lot of our health care and mental health providers are not getting the information they need around gambling to be able to do those assessments and assist students who might be in crisis.

So we have been doing all this through the ECU Gambling Research and Policy Initiative. And then it's been licensed out to an organization where they're all being distributed. A lot of these tools are actually going to be shown at the conference that [INAUDIBLE] with Susan's guidance on Friday.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, Susan, that leads into-- I was going to ask you, what is the conference going to be all about? What can people expect? What's your goal for it?

SUSAN SHERIDAN TUCKER: So our focus this year-- we have an annual conference. But this year, we're really addressing how gambling impacts young adults. So because I think-- because we don't do prevention early on, and kids are exposed to gambling at very early ages, and yet we're not talking to them about the risks. And so it's really important that our audience learns what those risks are and what we can be doing. I'd like to see policy change here in the state, that we have prevention materials in the middle schools and the high schools, which we currently don't have.

If we are not talking about this addiction, there's no surprise that when kids get into college-- where they're likely to do more risky things, as they're away from home for the first time. If they don't understand what they're engaging in, we can't possibly expect them to understand the risks involved in these behaviors.

So we'll be talking from-- we'll have Dr. Serena King, who is a local expert on gambling addiction. And she'll be talking from basically the high school age on. And then Michelle will carry it through for college age. We'll also have a panel discussion with people with lived experience in gambling and in sports betting. We'll have a young adult person who will share his story and what a current therapist is seeing as he works almost specifically with or exclusively with sport betting, people with sports betting addiction.

NINA MOINI: Susan, I wonder-- we have about a minute or so left-- if you could just share with folks, what is a sign? Like, what is a really big sign of someone that might be having a problem? I'm thinking about young adults who I wonder if their credit cards are linked to Mom and Dad and their financial situations.

SUSAN SHERIDAN TUCKER: Exactly, yeah.

NINA MOINI: And I just wonder, short of that, you're saying, let's start in the schools because there's more oversight when you're around that age versus at college, when who knows what folks are up to? But what is a sign that people, parents, friends can be looking for?

SUSAN SHERIDAN TUCKER: Well, I think we all have to be talking about our gambling habits, right? If you know your young adult is engaging in gambling, ask them questions. How often are you betting? Are you losing money? Are you not able to pay your bills because of your gambling? Are you increasing the frequency of your gambling? Are you denying that there's a problem? Are you only bragging about wins and not talking about your losses? Are they starting to lie to you?

These are all the signs that somebody is having a problem with gambling, among others. But also increased isolation, broken relationships-- these are telltale signs of somebody who has become much more obsessed with their gambling, that that becomes their primary activity and preoccupies their thoughts.

NINA MOINI: You're saying keep the lines of communication open. Don't be afraid to ask questions.

SUSAN SHERIDAN TUCKER: Absolutely.

NINA MOINI: Very good stuff. Thank you both so much for stopping by Minnesota Now. All the best with the conference.

SUSAN SHERIDAN TUCKER: Thank you so much.

NINA MOINI: Thank you. That's Susan Sheridan Tucker, Executive Director of the Minnesota Alliance on Problem Gambling, and Michelle Malkin, the assistant professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at East Carolina University.