Worry over rise in school gambling

KINGSTON, Jamaica –  RISE Life Management Services, the non-governmental organisation driving the prevention and treatment of addictive disorders, has raised alarm over the increased number of students gambling in schools.“There are a lot of young people in schools now that are gambling. We have known of young people in schools that have their own ‘cash pot system’. It is mirrored off the Cash Pot that is out there. “The difference is that you are not asked to pay the same sum; they may charge five or ten dollars per ticket,” RISE’s counselling project coordinator Richard Henry told Observer editors and reporters at the weekly Monday Exchange at the newspaper’s Beechwood Avenue headquarters in Kingston this week.Henry was reluctant to name the institutions, but confirmed that this was happening in at least three high schools in Kingston. He said RISE was also concerned that the gambling problem had extended to primary schools. A part of the issue, he said, was that young people do not understand what exactly gambling is.“We get a lot of adolescents sent from high schools in groups for counselling, and when you talk with them you will find that it is a way for them to get lunch money, because the truth is they went to school without lunch money. Some of them will actually tell you that they have watched their mother or father send them to school with money they won from [the] Cash Pot, so they come to believe that gambling is a viable way to earn money to go to school,” Henry said.“So we are not only having a difficulty working with the young people themselves, but to try and change the thinking of a young person who is going to go back home into a family that gambles and into a community that has tables set up for gambling is really a difficult task,” he said.“It is about educating people about the ills of gambling,” said Henry. (Jamaica Observer)