Canadian Roulette

From Canada Safety Council:


No one knows exactly how many compulsive gamblers end up taking their own lives in Canada.

The Canada Safety Council believes the number is over 200 a year. For every suicide, five gamblers with self-inflicted injuries could end up in hospital. Gambling addiction is also linked to a range of other serious personal and social harms such as bankruptcy, family breakup, domestic abuse, assault, fraud, theft and even homelessness.

The profits from government gaming operations are almost $13 billion nationally, but the costs of gambling addiction are not known. Some of these could be quantified, including medical care, policing, courts, prisons, social assistance and business losses. However, no simple dollar figure can measure the devastation to the lives of those affected by pathological gambling.

Suicide attempts among pathological gamblers are much more frequent than among the general population.

Suicide attempts are more common with pathological gambling than with any other addiction.

Problem gamblers often have other dependencies such as alcohol or drug abuse.

Problem and pathological gamblers tend to be young (under 30).

In a Quebec study of college students, 26.8 percent of pathological gamblers had attempted suicide, compared to 7.2 percent of college students who had no gambling problem.

A survey of Gamblers Anonymous members in the United States found that 48 percent had considered suicide and 13 percent had attempted it." (2006)

Thousands of other reports and data are available on the subject.

Community members and parents of young people (like myself) in our region deserve to have this information provided to them as the legislature moves toward considering expanding gambling and slots.