The On­line Gam­ing As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (OGATT) is ve­he­ment­ly against a sug­ges­tion by the Op­po­si­tion Leader to raise the le­gal age for gam­bling from 18 to 25.

OGATT, whose mem­bers are most­ly Lot­to booth op­er­a­tors, told Guardian Me­dia that 18-year-olds can make adult de­ci­sions, how­ev­er, pres­i­dent Dean Per­sad said some be­lieve rais­ing the age to 21 can be ac­cept­able.

“I did a sur­vey with about 100-200 agents this morn­ing and we are say­ing that 18 is fine for us be­cause at 18 you are an adult, you are al­lowed to vote in this coun­try, and you are al­lowed to make de­ci­sions on your own. So, we are say­ing we don’t mind the 18 as it is.

“Some agents are say­ing they don’t mind go­ing to 21 be­cause some­times there is a prob­lem with dis­tin­guish­ing the age of peo­ple, some­times peo­ple may say they are 18 and they are 16 and we have to ask for an ID card. We are def­i­nite­ly against the age of 25 be­cause we feel that 18 and 21, peo­ple are big enough to make sen­si­ble de­ci­sions,” Per­sad ex­plained.

Per­sad said peo­ple should al­so note that while gam­bling is a sen­si­tive is­sue with sev­er­al re­li­gious lead­ers con­demn­ing the act as a whole, for many lot­to agents it is their sole means of in­come and any move to re­strict any cus­tomer de­mo­graph­ic will have a di­rect ef­fect on prof­its.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s call to raise the age came in the con­text of her talk­ing about the lure of il­le­gal gam­bling on young peo­ple and pos­tu­la­tion that gangs are al­so fight­ing to con­trol gam­bling ma­chines and il­le­git­i­mate forms of gam­bling.

But Per­sad be­lieves if il­le­gal gam­bling is the prob­lem, then the fo­cus should be on that.

“Our thing is, and this is what is baf­fling me, if the source of a prob­lem is iden­ti­fied, why doesn’t the Op­po­si­tion Leader and the Gov­ern­ment and the au­thor­i­ties tack­le il­le­gal gam­bling, that is where they have to fo­cus. Rais­ing the age lim­it to 25 will do ab­solute­ly noth­ing to pre­vent any il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty in terms of gam­bling,” Per­sad posit­ed.

He said rais­ing the age lim­it would do noth­ing but push that de­mo­graph­ic to­wards il­le­gal forms of gam­bling.

“Tack­le the source of the prob­lem, make leg­is­la­tion, let the po­lice do their work, let them do some­thing and that is what will stop il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with gam­bling,” Per­sad said.

More checks need­ed

Mean­while, Wayne Lee, the co-or­di­na­tor of the Em­manuel Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, an or­gan­i­sa­tion that helps peo­ple with gam­bling ad­dic­tion said the prob­lem of the youth and gam­bling goes way be­yond a con­ver­sa­tion on what the le­gal age to par­tic­i­pate should be.

Lee told Guardian Me­dia that ed­u­ca­tion on its dele­te­ri­ous ef­fects is what is need­ed right now, es­pe­cial­ly in ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions.

“Last year, I went to a sec­ondary school to give some ad­vice to peo­ple from 14 to 17 years old. She (Op­po­si­tion Leader) is talk­ing about 18 but I think an ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme should be in place for the sec­ondary school. Be­cause it’s start­ing in the sec­ondary schools and it’s a mess right now. They play clos­est to the line, they play cards, if you go in­to the schools, I got a cou­ple calls from wel­fare of­fi­cers in the schools and they are say­ing that they don’t know what to do. An ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme should be put in place to ex­pose the chil­dren ear­ly to the ills of gam­bling,” Lee em­pha­sised.

He added, that to turn young peo­ple away from gam­bling, be it le­git­i­mate or oth­er­wise, there needs to be con­trols on the ad­ver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing of the ad­dic­tive prac­tice.

“In all those lit­tle bars you go to, you see teenagers play­ing roulette, there are no checks and bal­ances, every­one is mak­ing a dol­lar, and no­body is say­ing how dan­ger­ous that is. So, rais­ing the age lim­it is just touch­ing the tip of the ice­berg and noth­ing is be­ing done about the root prob­lems,” Lee lament­ed.

Lee claimed, years ago, the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) was asked to print the num­ber of an ad­dic­tion hot­line on all lot­tery tick­ets but that was nev­er done.