HOPEWELL, Hanover — Selena Stephens knows all too well the danger of gambling and the destructive impact it can have on families. She’s seen it first-hand.

Though it happened more than three decades ago, the final-year guidance and counselling student still remembers how a male relative won $16 million from gambling but then lost it all. The man’s son then became addicted to gambling and also became destitute.

Stephens shared the story with the Jamaica Observer after a parents’ workshop on underage gambling which was held at the Christian Deliverance Centre Church Hall in Hopewell on Wednesday, November 9.

“[The man] invested in vehicles only. The vehicle crashed and we had to buy a new one. No money coming in from the vehicles that you are putting out and all of those things, so you know everything just went down the drain. The only thing that he had out of it was the house,” she recalled.

The man’s son, who was in his late 30s when his father had his $16-million windfall, saw gambling as a ticket out of his own financial problems.

“He thinks that [gambling] changed his father’s life, and so the son basically thinks that it will change his life too,” Stephens said.

Like a generational curse, the young man — as his father before him — lost everything because of gambling.

“He is addicted to the majority of the gambling games and this cost him his marriage, his kids, his home; he built a house with his wife and now he is basically living with his mother,” stated Stephens.

“He did not want to listen. He thought that gambling would bring him out of his financial problems, which is not true because it only got him into more debt. He has nothing. He doesn’t pay bills; nothing at all. Basically just gambling to buy another [ticket] the next day,” she added.

She is encouraging young people to be careful.

“I am not going to say that you cannot gamble but… if you know that you cannot lose that $10,000, do not gamble it,” pleaded Stephens who urged everyone to avoid becoming addicted to games of chance.

She said Wednesday’s meeting gave her tools that will help her provide support to her relatives and others like them. The event was organised by the Council of Voluntary Social Services along with its member organisation, Tryall Fund. It was hosted in collaboration with the Betting, Gaming & Lotteries Commission (BGLC) and RISE Life Management Services.

During the meeting RISE Programme Manager Richard Henry spoke of the importance of sending the right message. The father who won $16 million, he said, should have told his son it was just luck and not a strategy for long-term wealth creation. According to the US Center for Disease Control and prevention, the odds of winning the jackpot are less than one in a million or one in 292.2 million and therefore, one has a greater chance of being struck by lightning rather than winning the jackpot.

“That is the conversation that needs to happen, but instead the youngster was able to take that information and process it for himself wrongly,” he said.

“It is a slippery slope because once you start to go downhill and start to have problems with the gambling affecting your work, family life etc if you don’t have an intervention, I can tell you, you are going nowhere but the bottom. It gets worse,” he emphasised.

Henry manages RISE’s programme for the prevention, treatment and research for gambling disorders and responsible gaming. He said gambling is a disease that is not easily diagnosed. Counsellors rely heavily on gathering voluntarily provided or second hand information from patients’ family and friends.

With both anecdotal and scientific references showing that gambling is an issue in schools, local stakeholders have moved to assess the extent of the problem and put forward solutions.

A 2007 study, conducted by RISE Life Management Limited through funding provided by the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Commission of Jamaica, indicated that one in five young people has or is at risk of developing a gambling problem. A follow-up study is now due for release in another two months.

The 2007 research was conducted among a total of 1,559 males and 740 females within the 10-19 age group and taken from across the country.

“That is significant. We have done some work since 2007 in terms of underage gambling prevention [including] being in schools counselling peer educators, training them as well as training guidance counsellors,” stated Henry.

RISE Life Management Services is embarking on a programme aimed at training guidance counsellors in schools across the island. This was made possible through an MOU with the Ministry of Education that will run up to 2026. The programme also involves the teaching of eight lesson plans on underage gambling prevention.

Meanwhile, a study on adult gambling that was completed earlier this year found that men are more at risk than women. The study also indicated that Jamaica has a moderate (13 per cent) problem of gambling among adults. Though these numbers are not considered alarming, Henry believes more needs to be done to address the issue.

“We do recognise that we need more programmes, we need more support even in the gaming lounges and the places that people go to gamble. We must provide more services and opportunities for persons to get help. The ease and access to treatment must be improved significantly because most persons with gambling problems don’t get help. A third of them are able to overcome the gambling problem on their own but what happens to the other two thirds? We have to get to those persons as well,” he said.

He also spoke of the need to help those who gamble online.

“We have a voluntary self-exclusion programme with gaming lounges. We need to create that kind of situation also with online gambling where people can ban themselves as well on these platforms. Internationally, there are some of these countries that have it and I think it is a direction that we need to go, especially with mobile betting. People should be able to ban themselves if they are gambling in a disorderly way, out of control,” Henry said during Wednesday’s meeting.

Programme manager at the Council of Voluntary Social Services Annmarie Kirlew said the Hanover workshop was geared towards providing parents, guardians, caregivers and any monitoring body with the skills to identify children who gamble.

The Corporate Area is considered to be the leader in gambling, followed by western Jamaica. Two workshops were held in Kingston and the Hanover leg is the last one for the year. It was attended by participants from schools, churches and other groups in St James and Hanover.

Among the attendees was Hopewell High School peer counsellor Diandra Coleman who urged parents to look out for clues that their children are gambling and seek help at any signs of addiction.

Meanwhile, BGLC director of licensing and registration, Maurice Thompson reminded meeting participants that it is illegal for children under the age of 18 to gamble. He urged children to report adults who ask them to purchase lottery tickets for them.