Tobacco ads were banned in 2002 - to help support addiction recovery and prevent addiction in young people. Gambling ads need to be banned for the same reasons.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tobacco: 

A total ban on direct and indirect advertising, promotion and sponsorship, can substantially reduce tobacco consumption and protect people, particularly youths, from industry marketing tactics. To be effective, bans must be complete and apply to all marketing categories. Otherwise, the industry merely redirects resources to nonregulated marketing channels. The tobacco industry strongly opposes such comprehensive bans because they are effective in reducing tobacco use.

The harm from gambling

• According to the British Gambling Prevalence Survey 2010 (BGPS), 4.5m or 8.5% of >16 year-olds suffer harm because of gambling. (5.5% low-risk harm, 1.8% moderate-risk harm and 1.2% problem-gambling harm). Similarly, high percentages of overall vulnerable gambling and problem gambling have been reported just outside of Great Britain, for example, 13.9% and 9.3% of the adult population were classified as vulnerable gamblers, in the 2016 Northern Ireland Gambling Survey and Isle of Man Gambling Survey 2017, respectively
• The prevalence of lifetime problem gambling has never been measured in the UK. Lifetime problem gambling rates in Europe across 20 independent studies have varied from 0.7% to 6.5% with a median of 2.1% and an average of 2.8%
• 1.5m 11-16-year-olds gamble (1.7% suffer problem-gambling harm, 2.7% suffer low to moderate harm, and 31.5% are non-problem gamblers)
• 1.05m healthy life-years are lost annually due to gambling-harm, which represents approximately 6.9% of all loss of healthy life. (This does not include gambling harm on non-gamblers, legacy-harm in former gamblers or harm to the community). For comparison, tobacco is estimated to be the second-largest factor to harm to health at 10.8%
• Tracey Crouch, a British Conservative Party politician and the former Minister for Sport, Civil Society and Loneliness (2017–2018) resigned in 2018 over concerns about the neglected gambling crisis and cited two people tragically take their lives every day

The extent of gambling advertising 

As of data from 2017, the industry spends £1.5bn every year on advertising. That accounts for about 8% of the total UK advertising market. According to research, the average young person sees more than 3000 ad impressions per day across different mediums. If this is accurate, this would mean that the average young person may see 240 gambling ad impressions per day.

• Data from 2017 shows that the industry spends £1.2bn (80% of their budget) annually on online advertising
• From 2014 to 2017, the industry increased spending on social media ads from £40m to £140m. Social media ads have allowed ads to be repeatedly and continuously targetted to young and vulnerable people. Anedotally, I have seen 11 gambling ads on Facebook within a 5-minute window.
• The gambling industry has sponsorship partnerships.with 17 (85%) Premiership Football Clubs
• 26 of the top 44 (59%) English Football clubs have a betting company's logo on their shirt
• As well as Football, other sports such as Rugby, Cricket, Darts, Snooker and Formula 1 Racing have been inundated with gambling sponsorships. This has been a cheap and effective way of reaching young people. (According to BGPS 2010, problem gambling is most common among 16-24-year-olds, then 25-34 years old and so forth.)

Some other outstanding issues with gambling

• According to data from the APMS 2007, the prevalence of psychotic experiences in those with no problem, at-risk, and problem gambling were 5.1%, 11.1%, and 29.7%, respectively. It should be noted that psychotic experiences are only one measure of mental health. Moreover, someone can be mentally unwell without suffering from hypomania, thought control, paranoia, strange experiences, and hallucinations. Despite significant associations between mental health problems and vulnerable gambling, large-scale efforts to promote safer gambling have centred around encouraging responsible gambling at the consumer-level
• Following the BGPS 2010 and until 2015/16, funding for prevalence studies in Great Britain was severely cut. As a result of this funding cut, Great Britain's high-quality studies on gambling, the BGPS, were stopped. Since 2010, data on problem gambling has been gathered with self-completion forms included in health care surveys. Surveys with a health angle have previously demonstrated to capture far fewer gamblers than gambling specific studies. Hence, efforts to understand and measure gambling-related harms have been notably limited since 2010
• Prevalence studies select only individuals living in only private residences. Consequently, studies in Great Britain exclude many vulnerable groups of people who are more likely to be vulnerable gamblers, such as the homeless, those living in temporary accommodation, or correctional facilities Furthermore, problem gamblers are less likely to be at home, instead, vulnerable gamblers have their free-time occupied with gambling or overworking to pay off debts
• Gambling mortality studies have not yet been conducted for the Great British population. Amongst 20-49-year olds, 6.8% of deaths (1584 deaths) and 55, 000 years of life lost are estimated to be resulting from gambling-harm on the PG population. An estimate using the mortality ratios from a Swedish study reflected 763 suicides (about 12% of all suicide deaths - in the UK in 2018, there 6507 suicides in total)
• NICE clinical guidelines are recommendations on how healthcare and other professionals should care for people with specific conditions. The recommendations are based on the best available evidence. There are currently 0 NICE guidelines on gambling. As of 24th July 2018, gambling has been referred to NICE as a project, but it has not yet been scheduled into the work programme
• Despite calls by the Royal Society for Public Health, loot boxes are still not considered a form of gambling
• Betting shops are crammed into areas of deprivation. There are 18 betting shops on a single street (High Street North) in London. 19% of all betting shops are in the top 10% of most deprived postcodes. 52% of all betting shops are in the top 30% of most deprived postcodes. An interactive map of betting shops can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/BettingShopsMap
• The campaign for fairer gambling had 10 years of delays before the max wager for fixed-odds betting terminal (FOBTs) was brought down from £100 to £2. This has been in effect since March 2019. However, no due consideration was given for online fixed-odds gambling.
• From a legislative, regulatory and public health perspective, several significant steps should be taken immediately to prevent vulnerable gambling and limit gambling-related harm. Namely, a comprehensive advertisement ban, as was done for Tobacco products in 2002, and passing legal accountability for ensuring safe gambling on to operators, should be a minimum in any meaningful gambling reform.

Why do I care?

• I am a 5th-year Medical Student at Imperial College London. After looking into the problem over the past several months, I've felt dismayed by the scale of gambling-harm in the country, the lack of awareness, and the limited prevention & treatment efforts.
• It has now been seven years since my Dad passed away at the age of 53. In my 15 years with him, I witnessed gambling continuously and significantly deteriorate the quality of life in my family with no respite. At the time of his passing, I couldn't help but feel conflicted, given how, in the end, only death brought an end to the suffering. It greatly saddens me to see in retrospect that my Dad's problem-gambling could have been treated and even prevented. Yet, in the words of the Gambling Commission in 2018, this issue has received "remarkably little attention" at the expense of countless numbers of families.