Time seems to pass ever so slowly before the age of about sixteen. Childhood seems to last an eternity. A defining feature of adulthood is the speed at which time seems to race by, and it reminds all of us how fleeting and precious our childhoods were.
Some adults, however, conspire to deny the very essence of childhood to children. Whilst it might be naive and romantic to suggest that children are innocent of the vices of the world, it is certainly true that childhood is a uniquely precious and delicate stage of life, never to be repeated, which should be defended against all who would seek to exploit it.
This week it was revealed that 55,000 children in Britain are problem gamblers, a shocking enough statistic, but all the more so when one considers that this only covers the age range 11-16. A recent report in the Guardian Newspaper highlighted a gambling commission report to be published this week. It said the report.
...also found that 70,000 youngsters were at risk and that 450,000 children bet regularly, the equivalent of one in seven children aged 11 to 16.
The gambling industry, whether intentionally or not, now violates the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international, legally binding agreement It entitles children to 'protection from all other forms of exploitation prejudicial to their welfare'. If there is a more succinct definition of gambling addiction, it's yet to be publicised.
The explosion of gambling advertising from 2007 onwards and the then Labour government's own naive contention that gambling had become a more mainstream activity, has normalised an abnormality in children's lives. The small amount that the industry has done, including removing branding from children's sports kits, has been negligible compared to the impact of the widespread availability of gambling on and offline.
Two thirds of children interviewed said that they had been bombarded with gambling adverts. In addition to this, the worlds of gambling and online gaming have begun to merge, with gambling companies clearly knowing where their next generation of customers are likely to come from.
These, then, are the childhood thieves; their purpose is to introduce children to something that is corrosive to their development into content and functioning adults. In doing so they take something from children that is priceless and irreplaceable, another cost of our catastrophic gambling problem.