Gambling can be seen as harmless fun, an interesting leisure pursuit, morally reprehensible or a serious mental health issue depending on the actions of the individual and the effects those actions have on that person and those around them.

Addiction is defined as the disruptive behaviour or activity associated with something that that a person is dependent on – gambling, alcohol, drugs, eating disorders etc Addiction generally interferes with the ability to work, study, or interact normally with family and friends.

However the first question before we explore gambling and the NHS is to why ask this is suddenly becoming big news. (For a fuller account checkout an interesting article by Alan Cassels ‘Drug Companies Peddling Paranoia’ in New Internationalist Publications) but briefly the following is relevant for readers to get an overview of how the current debate has been started).
About thirty years ago the British physician, Julian Tudor-Hart published his famous ‘inverse care law’: ‘those who most need medical care are the least likely to get it.’ Modern pharmaceutical research is playing Dr Hart’s law out on a macabre global scale. While the debilitating diseases of the poor – such as malaria, tuberculosis and sleeping sickness – have few or no treatments, the drug companies are busy working on cures for a ballooning set of ‘made-up’ diseases of the rich and privileged. There are now drugs for toenail fungus, ‘pre-hypertension’ and bedwetting; for compulsive shopping and gambling ‘addiction’.

How do drug companies create ‘markets’ for new drugs – they create ‘new’ diseases by hiring public relations agencies and work with academics. ‘You find a professor working in a university and fund that professor to write a book, or to do a media tour around the country. Or you find a public figure, a sports figure or an actor, to go around and meet and work with journalists, and to do work with public forums, so you literally create this need.’

Looking at the latest ‘gambling’ disease we can see all the hallmarks of the creation of an investment led ‘social disease’ – the drug companies are fully aware of the market potential and how well a disease area ‘performs’. The rising rates of gambling addiction or obesity and the dark clouds of potentially dire public health consequences are seen in terms of their silver linings – generating legions of new customers. Drug companies claim they need a large market to recoup their research and development costs. But the top drug companies throw nearly three times more money at marketing and promotion than they do at basic R&D. And their initial research is often already ‘funded’ by the taxpayer.

So who actually runs the NHS? More in our next blog…..

Benefit from affordable homeopathic treatment for both you and your family at the College of Practical Homeopathy’s Teaching Clinic.

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