The gambling industry uses the same tactics as the tobacco industry to downplay harms and influence public opinion, science, and policy for the sake of profits over public health, according to a new study published this month [February 2025] in The BMJ.

With this week [Feb. 25, 2025] marking the 20th anniversary of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco, the study’s findings represent a call to action for healthcare professionals, researchers, and policymakers. It comes at a time when gambling products are increasingly considered global health-harming commodities, like tobacco, ultra-processed foods, chemicals, fossil fuels, and alcohol.

Governments must act to prevent large scale avoidable harm, the researchers say.

“Tobacco companies denied health risks, cast doubt on science, and lobbied against regulations,” says co-author Professor Anna B. Gilmore, director of the Local Health and Global Profits. “The gambling industry is now doing the same to avoid accountability.”

Lead author May van Schalkwyk, a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, agrees.

“Never underestimate how sophisticated that playbook is,” she says. “It’s so much more than just denying of harm. It’s influencing research, how that research is done, who does it, who uses it, [and] what questions are asked, influencing every stage of the policy process.”

In the U.S., where the gambling market is set to hit nearly $122 billion this year, researchers recently reported a dramatic increase in sports betting and people seeking help with gambling addiction since a 2018 Supreme Court decision paved the way for states to legalize sports betting. 

Total sports wagers skyrocketed from $4.9 billion in 2017 to $121.1 billion in 2023, with 94% of wagers during 2023 placed online.

Research has shown gambling harms individuals, families, and communities, with severe consequences including financial hardship, family breakdown, child neglect, domestic violence, mental illness, and even suicide. Vulnerable populations, such as young people and those in poverty, are at greater risk. 

Gambling-related harms also place a significant burden on public services, increasing crime rates and deepening social inequalities. 

Van Schalkwyk and her colleagues say gambling harms are an “industrial epidemic driven by commercial practices.” They are completely logical outcomes of environments designed to get people gambling, she says.

“[This is about] people having the right to live in healthy and safe environments and for policymaking and science to be protected from conflicts of interest so that the public interest can be prioritized,” says van Schalkwyk. “Until the gambling industry is recognized as a corporate source of harm and its influence is restricted, preventing gambling-related harm will be impossible.”

The study emphasizes that the failures of past tobacco regulation provide important lessons for policymakers today. About 70 years ago, US tobacco companies released its “Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers,” falsely claiming that smoking had no proven link to disease: “We believe the products we make are not injurious to health,” the statement read.

The tobacco industry delayed meaningful restrictions for decades, using misinformation and lobbying. Only through strict marketing rules and restricting the industry from policymaking was some progress made in reducing smoking, the researchers say, though tobacco products continue to cost millions of lives.

The U.K.’s 2005 Gambling Act, heavily influenced by industry lobbying, positioned gambling as another legitimate leisure activity and an important part of the national economy, the study shows. 

The industry-funded Gambling Commission became responsible for ensuring compliance with social responsibility codes (based on industry-created codes of practice) and had to legally consult the industry about regulatory changes. This enabled the industry to expand and profit significantly, especially through digital platforms reaching global markets, the researchers say.

In 2014, four major UK gambling companies pledged to regulate themselves by limiting certain ads and forming the Senet Group to oversee these efforts. However, much like the former Tobacco Industry Research Committee, the group primarily served industry interests by shifting the focus onto individual responsibility rather than systemic harms, the researchers say. It was dissolved in 2020, with its role absorbed by the Betting and Gaming Council.

The industry has continued to fund GambleAware (formerly the Responsible Gambling Trust) and other organizations that have been shown to serve primarily industry interests. Last year, the Labour government’s 2024 election manifesto expressed a commitment to “continue to work with the industry on how to ensure responsible gambling.”

Much like tobacco companies in the past, gambling firms remain viewed as legitimate partners in health policymaking, the study shows. Their tactics mirror Big Tobacco, including:

• Funding research that benefits the industry
• Minimizing the scale of gambling-related problems
• Positioning itself as socially responsible by funding research, education, and treatment, while resisting stronger regulations
• Questioning scientific evidence that links gambling to harm

Other health-harming industries, including fossil fuel companies, have also followed tobacco’s lead, adopting the same types of tactics, says Professor Mark Petticrew of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Health. For instance, a 2021 study showed that ExxonMobil deployed Big Tobacco-style rhetoric for decades to downplay the gravity of climate change, shifting blame away from industry and onto consumers to undermine climate litigation, regulation, and activism.

Major pesticide companies and their trade bodies have also acted to influence science and maintain favorable regulatory environments while undermining the credibility of researchers and agencies that publish findings threatening to their commercial interests, another new study shows.

“The pesticide industry uses the same political and scientific practices, including misleading the public and policymakers, denying the harms, distorting and denying the evidence, and polluting the narrative – and focusing on their profits and their corporate reputation at the expense of public health,” says Petticrew, co-author of the recent gambling and pesticide studies as well as the book “The Commercial Determinants of Health.”

Similarly, New Zealand’s “road lobby” was recently found to employ the same strategies as the tobacco industry to obstruct transport policies like walking and cycling, another new study says.

“The emphasis on individual actions and consumer choice—rather than talking about actions at a company or industry level—was an example of the way these groups worked in a similar way to industries like tobacco lobbyists,” says lead author Dr. Alice Miller of Otago University in New Zealand.

In the latest gambling study, the researchers say the solution needs to be comprehensive, protecting research and policymaking from industry influence while remaining vigilant as industry adapts. They call for implementing stricter gambling advertising rules, limits on the gambling industry’s role in shaping policy/public health initiatives, and the mandatory provision of evidence-based health warnings—changes that may be difficult to establish in the U.S., where commercial speech is protected under the First Amendment. 

Other recommendations include limiting access to gambling products and services and recognizing gambling as a harmful industry needing urgent regulation.

“There’s no point in doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. The industry will then just circumvent that and new ways to influence,”  says van Schalkwyk. “You have to be in it for the long game.”

Reference

van Schalkwyk MC, Hawkins B, Cassidy R, Collin J, Gilmore AB, Petticrew M. Learning from tobacco control to tackle gambling industry harms. BMJ. Published online February 12, 2025. doi:10.1136/bmj-2024-082866