When we talk about gambling addiction, most of the times associations accuse casino because it is the only place where they know that people can spend money. In France the government tries to protect its citizen by voting some laws about gambling games.
The game addiction is also declared as a psychological disease that the government takes in charge if you have to go a hospital for it. They will pay for you and of course a French hospital in Nantes (for more details) caught the opportunity to make a business with it. If you have a game addiction, the hospital will take care of you and the government will pay for it. Doesn’t look like a scam? This is the reason
In France the Françaises des Jeux, an important gambling game, actually, the most important gambling games of France in owned by the French government for 72%. It is quite important, and the benefit of theses gambling games goes directly to the finances of the French government. It is the fifth receipts of France.
And so second problem is that this society has been proposing a game called Rapido for 10 years. Rapido is a game that you can play everywhere in France in a pub for 1 Euro. You play online, a TV is in a pub and in a minute you have the result of your bet. You bet on horse races. The addiction is fast because it is easy to choose some numbers, fast because a race is organised every 2 minutes from 6 am to 11 pm and you can watch it on the screen of the pub.
It is very easy to be addicted to this game. For example, my own experience: once I want to a bar with some friend around 7 o’clock and we wanted to have a breakfast after a long night. We went to a bar where it was possible to play Rapido. We order our meal but after that, we saw the TV screen with written on it Rapido. A friend of mine knew it already, he explained the rules and after 15 games we stopped playing but because we were a group of people and we had to go somewhere else. What I want to mean it’s that it is very easy to be addicted to this kind of game and especially if you are alone and no one to check on you.
So, the government is managing an addicted game but give to the online casino a lot of regulation to prevent these kinds of disease. So this is why, probably, this disease is refund by the government and the government try to annoyed online Casino Bet because it is its biggest competitor. And the percentage of gaming addiction is around 2% so; it is quite weak and not an important charge for the government yet.
