A public health crisis is rapidly taking hold, Congress has been warned, with “all available evidence” pointing to an increase in problems surrounding America’s gambling boom.
Sports betting, now legal in 38 states, has exploded across the US over the past six years. Campaigners and clinicians say addiction levels have grown during this surge, with young people among those affected. Athletes and sporting officials say harassment has risen, too.
On Capitol Hill this week, a handful of senators signaled they could support a federal crackdown. But the industry is already pushing back.
“I am not opposed to sports gambling,” said Harry Levant, a gambling addiction counselor and director of gambling policy at the Northeastern University School of Law’s Public Health Advocacy Institute, and himself a recovering gambling addict. “In fact, I support the properly regulated legalization of sports gambling.”
Addressing the Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday, however, Levant stressed that he was “vehemently opposed to and deeply concerned about what has transpired” since 2018, when the supreme court overturned a decades-old federal ban on legalizing sports betting.