"Tobacco, alcohol and gambling corporations have been highly effective in stalling, diverting and blocking public health measures. This book provides an original and engaging expose; of the ethical issues faced by people and organizations when they accept industry money in ways that facilitate corporate influence with the public and with policy makers. It starts with a detailed examination of the risks of accepting such profits and what might be done to reduce them, then moves on to introduce the concept of a continuum of 'moral jeopardy' which shifts the emphasis from accept/not accept binaries to a focus on the extent to which people are willing to accept funding. This shift encourages people to think and speak more about the risks and to develop clearer positions for themselves. The content will be helpful to those working in government agencies, addiction services, community organizations or anyone interested in reducing the harms of addictive consumption"--

This book explores the risks of accepting profits from industry and how to reduce these risks.

There are now signs that, after decades of phenomenal growth, the era of unrestrained gambling liberalisation may be coming to an end. However, the power of the Gambling Establishment is formidable, and it will certainly fight back. Drawing on research and policy examples from around the world, the book provides a unified understanding of the dangerousness of modern commercialised gambling, how its expansion has been deliberately or inadvertently supported, and how the backlash is now occurring. The term Gambling Establishment is defined to include the industry which sells gambling, governments which support it, and a wider network of organisations and individuals who have subscribed to the ‘responsible gambling’ Establishment discourse. Topics covered include the psychology of how gambling is now being advertised and promoted and the way it is designed to deceive gamblers about their chances of winning; the increased exposure of young people to gambling and the alignment of gambling with sport; understanding the experience of gambling addiction; the various public health harms of gambling at individual, family, community and societal levels; and how evidence has been used to resist change. The book’s final chapter offers the author’s manifesto for policy change, designed with Britain particularly in mind but likely to have relevance elsewhere. With detailed examples given of the ways a number of countries are responding to these threats to their citizens’ health, this book will be of global interest for academics, researchers, policymakers and service providers in the field of gambling or other addictions specifically, and public health and social policy generally.

The collection of case studies maps the corporate and financial structures of global gambling companies, the tactics that these companies employ to secure profits, the impact they exert on other industry sectors, as well as perspectives on regulation. The articles in the book cover different geographical areas, gambling formats and perspectives into how the global gambling industry has emerged, expanded, and how it is maintained and regulated, in order to form a picture of the global political economy of gambling. The chapters are written by leading scholars on gambling law, social sciences and economy.Chapters [Chapter-No 3.] and [Chapter-No 6] are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This edited book draws on a cross-cultural and historical lens to theoretically and practically analyse gambling regulations and the use of gambling revenue. It takes on a broad spectrum of perspectives, from the origin of the money, to the regulators, operators and beneficiaries of gambling, and looks at the interests, networks and power relations involved. This multidisciplinary collection elicits a shift in analysis, shedding light on a broader societal, historical and economic view of gambling and gambling policies, by its attention to implicit networks of power, influential legislation, gambling provision and infrastructure. Gambling Policies in European Welfare States will be of interest to students and scholars alike who are seeking cross-national and interdisciplinary analyses of welfare, politics, sociology and economics.

This edited volume aims to facilitate the evolution of the new public health approach towards gambling. Bringing together the work of international experts, it gives a current overview of the field, highlighting the need for a coordinated framework of prevention and harm reduction measures to replace current "player protection" measures. Chapters begin by exploring the impact of problem gambling, looking at its effects on several levels, ranging from the individual to the family and society. Subsequently an overview of prevention and harm reduction models is presented, bringing the reader to an in-depth understanding of what a public health approach to gambling would entail. Later chapters focus on potential challenges to monitoring and evaluation, inviting the reader to envisage possible barriers towards implementation and ways of overcoming these. The book concludes with recommendations on how to take a harm reduction approach, from a political and human rights perspective. This work gives a rare synopsis of the present-day issues when considering the implementation of a harm reduction strategy for gambling. Recent work by key professionals is presented in order to encourage further developments in this ever-changing domain. Such issues will be relevant to all those with an interest in the field of problem gambling, from clinicians, students and healthcare professionals, to politicians.

Marijuana is the most widely used illegal drug in the world. Over the past couple of decades, several Western jurisdictions have seen reforms in, or changes to, the way cannabis use is being controlled, departing from traditional approaches of criminal prohibition that have dominated cannabis use control regimes for most of the twentieth century. While reform is stalled at the international level, the last decade has seen an acceleration of legislative and regulatory reforms at the local and national levels, with countries no longer willing to bear the human and financial costs of prohibitive policies. Furthermore, legalization models have been implemented in US states, Canada and Uruguay, and are being debated in a number of other countries. These models are providing the world with unique pilot programs from which to study and learn. This book assembles an international who’s who of cannabis scholars who bring together the best available evidence and expertise to address questions such as: How should we evaluate the models of cannabis legalization as they have been implemented in several jurisdictions in the past few years? Which scenarios for future cannabis legalization have been developed elsewhere, and how similar/different are they from the models already implemented? What lessons from the successes and failures experienced with the regulation of other psychoactive substances (such as alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceuticals and “legal highs”) can be translated to the effective regulation of cannabis markets? Legalizing Cannabis will appeal to anyone interested in public health policies and drug policy reform and offers relevant insights for stakeholders in any other country where academic, societal or political evaluations of current cannabis policies (and even broader: current drug policies) are a subject of debate.