Michael Egerer

The Lower-Risk Gambling Guidelines (LRGG) represent a milestone in translating empirical evidence on gambling-related harm into public health guidance. As they are implemented internationally, contextual adaptation is essential to ensure relevance and effectiveness. This commentary discusses Finland's adaptation, which adjusted the expenditure threshold from 1% of household gross income to 2% of personal net income. Drawing on Finnish research, we argue this modification will enhance acceptability and adoption among people who gamble while adhering to the strong evidence base underlying the original Canadian LRGGs. The Finnish experience highlights how the LRGGs can be adapted without undermining their scientific foundation.

Proponents and critiques of the brain disease model of addiction (BDMA) discuss its benefits and shortcomings in the light of agency. Yet, in this controversy, the experiences of the persons suffering from addiction have so far been widely neglected. This article investigates addiction service's clients’ experiences with their recovery in the light of the BDMA. It asks what role the BDMA plays in the recovery narratives of persons struggling with addiction. Eleven focus groups were conducted with clients of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Canada. The interview protocol consisted of direct questions and discussion stimuli concerning the BDMA. The transcripts were analyzed by a thematic analysis. Participants both approved and disapproved the BDMA. The recovery narratives demonstrate how agency can be constructed without autonomy. Whereas the BDMA questions the agency of persons suffering from addiction in denying them autonomy, it helped as a symbolic resource in including the contradictive experiences with addiction into an authentic biography. This study thus urges addiction research to make use of agency in its entirety and take both, autonomy and biography, into account.

Effective and comprehensive harm reduction strategies to mitigate gambling-related harms are needed worldwide. The development of such strategies is however resource intensive. Using existing models in multiple contexts would thus be advisable. This study is part of a larger project investigating the feasibility and acceptability of the Canadian Lower Risk Gambling Guidelines (LRGG) within a Finnish cultural context. The Canadian guidelines recommend not gambling more than 1% of one’s household income, not gambling more than 4 days per month, and to avoid regularly gambling at more than 2 types of gambling products. 13 Focus group interviews were conducted (N = 37, 23 women, 14 men) across five subpopulations: individuals gambling at no-risk/low-risk levels, individuals with past experiences of problematic gambling, concerned significant others of those with gambling problems, professional gamblers, and social workers and health care professionals. The analysis utilised a deductive approach. While the subpopulations differed in their assessment of the LRGG in some regards, we were able to synthesise three concrete suggestions to adjust the Canadian LRGGs into the Finnish context. Participants proposed rephrasing the guidelines as follows: (1) Limit gambling to a fixed percentage of monthly personal income after taxes and other fixed expenses, (2) Restrict the number and duration of weekly gambling sessions, (3) Avoid regular participation in the most harmful forms of gambling, such as online casino games. Overall, the LRGG were considered as useful also in the Finnish context. However, our results suggest that some culturally specific rewording may be advisable. The main challenge in the implementation of the LRGG is that respondents across groups considered the guidelines to be aimed at someone else. Implementation therefore requires clear communication that these guidelines are for all individuals who gamble, not only those experiencing problems.

Editorial: The sociology of gambling

Many jurisdictions struggle to curb offshore gambling as established approaches to gambling regulation no longer apply to online gambling. This study aimed to examine the arguments used by Finnish stakeholders who discussed channeling as a tool to curb offshore gambling and the monopolistic gambling regime as a sustainable framework to tackle the issue of offshore gambling. In total, 18 Finnish public servants employed in ministries in charge of gambling matters and representatives of Veikkaus, the state-owned gambling company, were interviewed for the purpose of this study. Channeling was described by the interviewees as an important policy tool but without a regulatory framework to block offshore operation, it would remain an ideal type of political strategy. Beside the monopolistic gambling regime, the pros and cons of a potential licensing regime were discussed. This study showed that legislative and regulatory changes form a lengthy political process; the decrease of the market share of online gambling marked the beginning of a new era in Finland’s gambling policy.

There seems to be no shortage of gambling and problem gambling typologies. At a closer look, however, previous research identified types of problem gamblers and not of problem gambling. While correct typologies of gamblers are important for developing treatment, they are less useful for harm prevention. The current study uses a system theoretical approach to investigate gambling communication in order to develop a genuine typology of gambling. Snowball sampling of Finnish gamblers resulted in 56 participants, who wrote 48 narratives about their ordinary gambling, 43 narratives about their most remarkable gambling event, and 28 about their worst gambling experience. The approach is informed by systems theory: communication on gambling is understood as a result of the reduction of contingency. Rather than focusing on the meaning of gambling or why people gamble, the analysis investigates what is included and what is excluded to make gambling discussable, i.e., the contextures of gambling. Economic and family/intimate contexture were the most prominent. The latter appeared most often in the most memorable gambling experiences. The economic contexture was more common in narrating ordinary and worst gambling situations. In all, four types of gambling could be identified: genuine monetary gambling, resonating monetary gambling, commensal gambling, and liminal gambling. When comparing the previously identified types of gamblers with the types of gambling discovered in the present study, it becomes obvious that a shift from the gamblers, their background, their personality, and their motives to the gambling activity provides novel insights. The constant appearance of the familial/intimate dimension in the narratives indicates that, beside the financial harms, societal harms also need to be treated as a category of harm in its own right, not just as a consequence of personality disorders, psychological distress, or social deprivation.

Online gambling is a profitable industry both in the regulated market and in the unregulated offshore market. Difficulties in regulating the offshore online markets are exacerbated by concerns over lacking consumer protection measures in offshore environments and reduced financial and tax revenue from gambling. Blocking is a measure employed by numerous regulators to prevent access or financial transactions to unregulated gambling sites. Yet, little is known about how well such strategies work. The current scoping review focuses on evidence on the effectiveness of blocking measures. Based on the review, 14 publications were identified. The analysis focused on four themes: implementation, effectiveness, risks, and alternatives. Results show that there is a paucity of empirical research on the effectiveness of blocking measures. The scarce evidence suggests that the effectiveness of blocking measures depends on implementation. Blocking without proper implementation may be an insufficient and disproportionate tool. The effectiveness of blocking is particularly limited by a constant need for updates in terms of technology and blocklists. We argue that research on and the effectiveness of blocking measures is obstructed by an asymmetry in expertise in three dimensions: Between regulators and industry; between ordinary and heavy gamblers; and between gambling and IT researchers.