How the push to end tobacco advertising in the 1970s could be used to curb gambling ads today
There are uncanny parallels between the public health challenges posed by gambling advertising today and tobacco advertising 50 years ago, Deakin University history lecturer Carolyn Holbrook and Cancer Council Victoria historian Thomas Kehoe write.
If you think you are seeing a lot more gambling ads on television and online platforms, you are not imagining it. They are so common that high-profile AFL players have refused to participate in sponsored gambling.
Online gambling companies are ploughing huge amounts of money into advertising, and for good reason. The ads work. While fewer people are gambling overall, online gambling is a booming industry.
That is good history. Acceptance of this financial cancer of gambling should have been in the forefront of the gambling industry responses now. Alas nothing but threats to local content, sport support, and political party donations
How these people in the gambling companies live with their morality is something I find had to understand. Maybe they don’t care for anything but a dollar.