Report finds four out of five islanders gambled in 2019
Four out of five islanders took part in some form of gambling around 2019, a long-awaited pre-pandemic gambling study has revealed.
And local health experts expect that proportion to have increased since the pandemic.
The Health Impact Assessment included 1,234 responses – 2.4% of the 2019 population, with the data gathered between September 2019 and February 2020 using surveys and interviews.
It found that 79.9% of Guernsey survey respondents had gambled in the previous year, compared to 75.9% in the Isle of Man and 57% in Great Britain. Over 90% of adults aged 45-54 years had gambled in the past year, with 18 to 24-year-olds reporting the lowest prevalence, with only half having tried gambling in the last year.
The highest gambling activity was the Channel Islands Christmas Lottery – with 67.5% respondents having participated. This was followed by scratchcards, with 46% of adults purchasing them in the previous 12 months.
Director of Public Health Dr Nicola Brink said this showed the pre-pandemic position, but it may now have changed.
‘It is my view that pandemic pressures and the ongoing economic challenges that have followed are likely, if anything, to have worsened or exacerbated the trends that were detected in 2019/20,’ she said.
‘Hence, we can think of the findings as the minimum extent of the issues affecting Guernsey residents in 2024 and beyond.’
The prevalence of poor health indicators increased with the severity of gambling.
While the information is dated, head of Public Health intelligence Jenny Cataroche said it gave a clearer image of Guernsey’s gambling landscape.
‘This suggests that the majority of people in the island gamble and most do so without issue,’ she said.
‘However, the associations with poor health do not apply equally across all types of gambling, and there are some types of gambling where we see a strong association, or clustering, of poor health outcomes and health-harming behaviours. One of these is scratchcard use. The report found that where gambling occurs at a problem, or at-risk level, there can be strongly negative consequences affecting not only the gambler, but friends and family too.’
She added that scratchcard use was currently at a much higher level than in other places.
Dr Brink said the report offered a number of recommendations, including raising awareness of the harms of problem gambling and enhancing support for at risk and problem gamblers.
