Over the weekend the British press has had a field day reporting on the darker side of gambling. The government has been strongly criticised for its relaxation of gaming laws even though industry voices have long been lamenting the lack of the deregulation promised by the original Budd report. In a strange twist of fate, those foreign companies that bemoaned the money wasted on supercasino pre-development costs may now be thankful that they have not spent millions on casino projects unlikely to show a profit for many a long year.

On Saturday the Daily Mail, a newspaper that loves its anti-gambling stance to the point of hysteria, has come out against the proliferation of adult gaming arcades. To the dismay of the Mail, gaming group Agora has bought ten former bank branches around the high streets of England from which it can entice people, particularly women apparently, to spend their money playing the machines. The new Gambling Act means gaming companies no longer have to show demand for a particular venue, only satisfy local planning laws, although the Department of Culture, Media and Sport points out that councils are able to reject applications on the grounds of protecting children and vulnerable adults.

It is the use of the so-called FOBT machines in bookmakers, also mainly in high street locations, and B3 (£1 stake, £500 prize) machines labelled by some ‘the crack cocaine of gambling,’ that seems to exacerbate gambling problems in some individuals. In a measured report The Times newspaper devotes a 2-page spread to problem gambling case studies and the initial findings of the NHS gambling clinic opened ten weeks ago in London’s Soho. These suggest that around 60% of clinic referrals are for addiction to FOBTs.

Consultant psychiatrist Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones describes how the roulette gaming machines tap into the reward pathways of the brain. The charity GamCare suggests that more measures should be taken to limit spend and interrupt play on the machines as well as training cashiers to intervene when necessary. An advisor on pathological gambling to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Dr Emanuel Moran, comments that betting shops make over £600 million a year from FOBTs and says the government is turning a blind eye to the damage they cause.

Now that the casinos are no longer a cause for reporters' vitriol, having been beaten into almost or actual submission by smoking bans, machine limits, high taxation and an economic downturn, perhaps the British press has a more legitimate target in the high street gambling centres. The FOBTs and arcade machines may be lucrative for the operators but they hardly offer a reasonable return for entertainment – something the gaming industry insists that gambling should be. (E-02.09.09)

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