Support 2024 Bill to Require Gambling Addiction Education

An upcoming bill to be introduced in the 2024 session by Rep. Kevin Olickal and Sen. Ram Villivalam would require schools to include gambling addiction in health education.

This follows a similar bill passed in Virginia in 2022.

-Gambling disorder is a diagnosable chronic mental health disorder, like substance abuse disorders, according to the DSM-V.
-Gambling has a higher suicide rate than any other type of addiction with 1 in 5 people addicted attempting suicide.
-Though illegal for youth, teen rates of gambling addiction closely mirror adult rates.
-50% of people addicted to gambling commit crimes to support their gambling.
-Gambling addiction is growing extremely quickly, with a 30% increase in the risk for gambling addiction from 2018-2021 after the Supreme Court legalized sports betting.

Though it is a parallel type of disorder with an estimated 750,000 American teens addicted and significant social costs including hundreds of thousands at risk of suicide and committing crimes, this addiction is not required to be taught about in schools like alcohol or drug addiction.

We must take every step we can to educate our young people about the risks of addiction, especially addiction carefully engineered by large companies to prey on children shrouded by the privacy of a child's phone.

Contact your legislators to tell them to support this bill.