Steve Joordens

Like in some of these casinos, at least...

They're gambling together, you know, versus the kid in the bedroom doing the sports gambling, gambling alone.

So there is a bit of a benefit to the casino thing, but can you afford it?

And that's the trick.

No.

And so first of all, just to kind of understand, we know that in Canada with youth, it's somewhere around 30 to 40% are problem gamblers.

So when you take that 30 to 40% that are problem gamblers and then say one in five of them can get to suicidal ideation,

we're talking, you know, five to 10% of people.

And that's quite a bit.

And it's, it's in part because of the addiction that's bad enough, but imagine you had a heroin addiction and,

and you at some point have enough and you go into treatment, if you can stop doing heroin, yeah, you got to recover a little bit, et cetera, but you can sort of get back on your feet.

If you stop gambling tomorrow, but you have a $50,000 debt, you have a $50,000 debt.

And often, we also know for every problem gambler, there's about five other people to five to 10 that are affected.

That's usually their family.

Like their family has to deal with this debt

And for some people, they just don't want to bring that to the family.

They find themselves in this hole, owing more money than they can afford, not wanting to ask anybody for support.

You know, what are your options?

Your options become very slim.

And for some of them, obviously, suicide becomes an option.