In Japan, 30% of online gambling beginners fall into debt in a week

"I'm astonished at the speed," said Noriko Tanaka, representative director of the Society Concerned about the Gambling Addiction.

"We need drastic measures, such as cutting off access from Japan" to foreign online casino services, she emphasized.

In Japan, professional baseball players and show business people were found to have played online gambling, causing controversy as the illegality of the practice was not widely known.

The Tokyo-based society conducted the internet questionnaire survey on 93 men in their 10s to 50s who had received support from the organization. All of them gave their answers.

Respondents who started online gambling after learning of it on "advertisements or social media" accounted for 23.7 %, the biggest group.

Those who "became interested by watching videos on YouTube or other services" came next at 22.6 %.

Other popular answers included they "liked gambling and games" and "friends or acquaintances recommended" online gambling to them. Of the total, 30.1 % started borrowing money "within a week" after using online casino services for the first time, and an additional 33.3 % did so "within a month."

Those who borrowed "within a half year" reached 11.8 %, while 9.7 % borrowed "within three months." Those who did not borrow at all came to 7.5 %.

In Japan, it is illegal to play gambling at overseas casinos online even though the services are legal in their own countries. The survey showed that 52.7 % of respondents did not know that it is illegal even to access offshore online casino sites from Japan.

According to National Police Agency data released Thursday, an estimated 3.37 million people played gambling at offshore online casinos. A survey of online casino users showed that some 40 % did not recognize the illegality and that about 60 % were aware of their addiction to gambling.

"The government has been slow in taking measures. It's necessary to actively raise public awareness of the illegality," Tanaka said. "Support for those already unable to stop gambling is also necessary," she said. "We hope such people will come to talk with us."

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]

Photo by Reuters