Ravenwood - 11/30/04 06:00 AM
With smoking on the way out, pleasure police are looking for another "Big Tobacco". With the popularity of poker on the rise and televised Texas Hold'em poker tourneys gracing our TV screens, the pleasure-nazis are taking aim at gambling.
CNN reports that poker's popularity is rising with teens.
But Dan Romer, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, worries about kids who take gambling too far.Apparently, kids aren't supposed to have any fun at all."At a minimum, it should be monitored," says Romer, director of research at the Adolescent Risk Communications Institute at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center.
He oversaw the 2003 Annenberg National Risk Survey of Youth, which found that about 8 percent of the young people surveyed showed signs of having a gambling problem.
Those results led him to conclude that schools should teach about the dangers of gambling, the same way they teach that alcohol and drugs can be addictive. He also says that government officials who oversee public gambling -- casinos and lotteries -- have a special responsibility to closely watch young people, who are allowed to gamble legally in many states as young as age 18.
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