I’ll Take My Future on Red
I’ll Take My Future on Red
When we think about addictions that plague college students, we generally think about crystal meth, alcohol, and sex, but Lauren Patrizi has shed light on a new college addiction: online gambling. As an online gambling addict herself at 19 (because these online gambling firms are registered off-shore, where the 21 year age limit doesn’t apply), Patrizi wasn’t at all surprised to learn that college students are three times as likely as rest of the population to experience pathological gambling problems and twice as likely to experience sub-clinical gambling problems.
But students aren’t just finding internet gambling — internet gambling companies go out of their way to find them. Party Poker, one of the largest and best known online gambling firms, has begun advertising on TheFaceBook.com, the internet hub for college students (800+ colleges are registered, about 2.7 million users). In the ad, college students are hugging each other with the tagline, “Just wanna have fun?” Another site, Absolute Poker, has ads proclaiming, “College Students: Win Your Tuition.”
Ed Looney, the director of the New Jersey Council on Compulsive Gambling, explains, “I’ve been doing this for 35 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this Texas Hold ‘Em rage. When crack cocaine came out, the phenomenon was similar.”
Though there have been several bills on the state and federal level to curb online gambling, none address the issue of youth and addiction. More needs to be done. Gambling companies are moving overseas to avoid U.S. regulations. With more government action, hopefully fewer stories will end like Lauren’s: “I just wish I had talked about it sooner. I had pretty much everything to lose — college funds, credit card payments, a debt-free life. I am not even entirely sure how much I have spent over the last six months and I really don’t want to know. After a last, desperate $50 bet to try to cut my losses, I knew that I needed to stop.”
– Elana Berkowitz, Campus Progress
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That ad was a typo. It should read, “We will win your tuition.”
July 29th, 2005 at 2:23 pmIt’s not a typo. It’s simply a valuable lesson: always insist upon complete sentences. :)
July 29th, 2005 at 2:33 pmAh yes. “We” is the unspoken pronoun in that sentence.
July 29th, 2005 at 2:48 pmWell, they go to college for an education.
July 29th, 2005 at 2:56 pmI’ll Take My Future on Red
I’ll take MY future on Blue. ;)
July 29th, 2005 at 4:06 pmThe Texas Hold’em web sites (or at least some of them) are also notorious spammers. They like to run bots that search out the comment modules in Moveable Type sites and spam them with hundreds of links or trackbacks to their sites.
July 29th, 2005 at 4:42 pmIt is JUST like crack
8 people sit down, one leaves with all the money.
July 31st, 2005 at 3:58 amumm, mr buckfush, you might get your own blog. Then link to it here.
It’s tiring to wheel my mouse that much.
Also, i think your proposal comes from the right place, but is totally unachievable and unrealistic.
MAYBE tom delay could resign, but demanding a public apology from a political party or you will boycott??
whoo, whoooooop,whooop whooop. loony.
July 31st, 2005 at 4:01 amTwo words: Nanny State
Take it further. Make fast food illegal. You would save millions of lives.
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December 7th, 2005 at 2:21 am