The horrendous risks of gambling

We are told that gambling poses some massive risk to the health of the nation:

Gambling-related admissions to hospital have reached more than one a day, as the health service grapples with betting addiction across Britain.

There were 379 such admissions to hospital in 2018/19, up 28% on 2015/16, according to NHS Digital figures that include those diagnosed as having a “pathological” gambling addiction.

Heavens to Betsy that’s appalling, Quick, ban it. Regulate! Something at least.

The something being take a deep breath and think.

The Gambling Commission tells us that some 50% or so - we’re using rough numbers here - of the population gamble in any one month. One admission a day means a one in a million chance of problems leading to NHS admission from gambling.

This is not the same as a micromort because we’re talking about NHS admission here, not actual death - and whatever the more lurid tales of the NHS, no, admission does not equate to death.

How much of a risk is a micromort? Walking 17 miles or cycling 10 - both risks by accident. Government also tells us that we all really must, just must, walk and cycle more.

That is, one micromort is not some killer argument that an activity must be banned, controlled or otherwise regulated out of existence. It can’t be if it is positively insisted that we must go out and take such risks.

So our action to prevent that one hospital admission per day from the effects of gambling is - nothing. Despite the manner in which this is being breathlessly flagged up as some horrendous risk to the life and soul of the nation.

Actually, there’s a greater than one in a million chance that someone will die after getting out of bed this morning - we all do live fewer than one million days after all. We do not thereby regulate getting out of bed, nor ban it.