Gambling Advertising
Debate between Beccy Cooper and Carolyn Harris(2 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Carolyn Harris (in the Chair)
Order. Dr Beccy Cooper, you will be making a speech. There will be an appropriate time for you to make your points.
Dr Cooper
Let me see if I can answer that, and the hon. Member can tell me if I have not. During our experience with big tobacco, there was a big illegal market—a black market. We brought in various rules and regulations, and we got our environmental health officers and Customs on it. We were absolutely able to look at the black market in tobacco alongside regulating the legal industry. It is perfectly possible to do. In the world of online advertising—the hon. Member referred to the wild west—we have to be very intelligent in how we look at regulation, but it is possible. It needs better brains than mine to figure out how to do it digitally, but it absolutely is possible.
Moving on, evidence shows that one quarter of people who gamble have done so in direct response to advertising. That figure rises to almost four fifths among those at highest risk.