'Half a million students involved in gambling'

MANY university students are addicted to gambling and some use money borrowed from the Student Loan Fund (SLF) to fuel their habit, a network of academics who monitor gambling revealed during a seminar yesterday.

They urged officials to seriously tackle the issue, suggesting that cellphone operators be asked to help by blocking youths’ access to gambling websites.

Surachai Chupaka, a professor of mass communications at Ramkhamhaeng University, cited a 2012-2013 study of university students’ gambling habits, sponsored by Sodsri-Saridwongsa Foundation, that 500,000 students took part in gambling – mostly football betting or playing cards.

A field study to survey students’ gambling problems at eight universities nationwide found many self-destructive cases. For example, a football athlete was caught stealing valuables from dorms to fund his football-betting habit, and a group of students rotated to host card games at rented houses or dorm rooms, while some joined their parents to pool tens of thousand of baht for betting.

Surachai said: “There was a case of a female student using her SLF loan money to bet on football matches until she had no money to pay for tuition and had to drop out. The gambling students told us that while they had fun they also suffered immense stress.” 

Many university personnel were also found to buy underground lottery tickets on a regular basis.

Dhurakij Pundit University Peace Centre lecturer Atichat Tancharoen said his university encountered gambling in alcohol outlets near college dormitories. The university invited business operators and state officials to talk and sign an agreement to control booze outlets under the “Campus Safety Zone” project to bring order via a “social partnership” to help students graduate successfully.

“As for gambling, we used to have football betting where students bet on papers, but now it goes online where detection of gambling-addicted students is hard. In an inspection of dorms, we found students’ ATM cards left at the bookies because they’d lost in betting. Most of the money in ATMs was from SLF loans,” he added.

Mana Phrommee, head of Prince of Songkla University’s Student Discipline and Development Services Division, said his talks with students facing disciplinary punishment for gambling showed that the most popular form was online football betting. The university initially reacted by blocking wi-fi connection access to gambling websites.

“If possible, I’d like to propose that cellphone signal operators block access to gambling websites. This do-able initial move would lessen temptation to gamble,” he said. 

With some print and television media openly reporting football betting odds, he felt they should review such action because it promotes students’ interest in gambling. The government should help solve this issue – together with tackling young people’s drinking of alcohol, smoking and drug abuse.

The academics’ comments were made at a third seminar to discuss ways to minimise gambling, held at the Public Health Ministry’s National Health Commission Office in Nonthaburi. 

Public policy manager of the National Health Foundation’s Centre for Gambling Control, Pongsathon Chanrassami said that recommended solutions would be put to the Office of Higher Education Commission so such issues could be tackled. Proposals include setting up anti-gambling networks in campuses with participation from local communities, plus the public and private sector.

The Council of University Presidents should boost cooperation with media associations by establishing a “Media Ombud-sman” system to check reports that might directly boost gambling among students. And the National Broadcasting and Telecommuni-cations Commission would also be urged to ask cellphone signal operators to block access to gambling websites, he said.