Czech Republic Fighting Alcohol and Gambling Addiction

16:05
17 Dec

The Czech Republic is starting a serious fight against gambling and alcohol, as these two will be treated much the same as illegal drugs moving forward. An amendment in the country's strategy, approved by the authorities yesterday, led to a decision to restrict gambling and alcohol activities.

Jindřich Vobořil, national anti-drug coordinator, said that the strategy is to limit the use of alcohol and restrict access to gambling in order to make their impact smaller. Under the new strategy, valid until the end of 2018, the word "drug" has been replaced with the phrase “addictive substance and gambling" because those are major issues in the Czech Republic.

It seems that the problem of alcohol is clearly rising in the country, with 15% of adults drinking every day. Alcohol abuse is a major problem even in elementary schools where the number of children using alcohol has increased. Czech teenagers are drinking alcoholic beverages more than teenagers living in other countries and it seems that alcohol consumption is widespread, as 6% of those who die do so due to alcohol abuse.

The World Health Organization had ranked the Czech Republic second in terms of overall alcohol consumption: 16.45 L of pure alcohol for the period of 2003–2005 for every person fifteen years and over. However, the results were published in 2011. A more recent study of European nations records 11.4 L per person, placing it just above the EU average." www.expats.cz;
Easy access to gambling activities is another problem and a reason for concern because there are seven gambling machines available per 1,000 inhabitants in the Czech Republic. Gamblers spend more than $6 billion every year, and in 2012 Czech citizens placed $635 million in online bets, but not all bets were on regulated sites.
The authorities are aiming to put more effort into tracking and monitoring any unregulated gambling activities under this new strategy and to try and minimize the number of bets placed on unregulated sites. Even though gambling is the most profitable industry in the Czech Republic, unregulated gambling can cause many problems, affecting individuals and society in general.
According to the report, 170,000 people are facing gambling problems and half of them are on the way to developing an addiction to gambling. It is unknown whether the new strategy will be successful in preventing the underaged from drinking and gambling, but it will certainly bring some changes. The results of the new strategy will be known in the early spring of 2019.
Although online poker was not specifically mentioned, it belongs to the same category as the rest of online gambling activities, sadly, so poker players will likely feel the impact of these new strategies as well.

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