Ethical Gambling: A Necessary New Point of View of Gambling in Public Health Policies

“Corporate social responsibility” (1, 2) or “responsible gambling” (RG) (3, 4) are concepts that mediate the idea that gambling can be harmful to some gamblers, and the assumption that governments and companies can do something to mitigate the problems caused by gambling and to promote “appropriate” patterns of behavior in gamblers. Although many governments and companies have implemented strategic plans based on models of RG, this has not served to prevent one of the major public health problems caused by gambling, which is gambling disorder. On the contrary, gambling has increased globally, the initiatives based on RG models have had little relation to the research evidence on best practices to prevent harms (5, 6) and the independent gambling researchers that could improve RG initiatives are often ignored by policy makers (7–9). For Livingstone and Woolley (10), the term is limited by its lack of clear goals and terminological clarity. This paper defends the need for a specific concept: “ethical gambling” (EG), which goes one step further in assuming the responsibility of companies and governments not only with regard to the cause of the damage gambling induces but also with respect to the specific actions to prevent gambling disorder. The purpose of EG is to create the necessary environmental conditions that permit gambling as an economic activity, but with the primary objective of preventing potential health risks, primarily gambling disorder. In order to be able to understand the concept EG, it is necessary to consider the following assumptions with regard to gambling (11):