Singapore to launch new problem gambling campaign in 2015

Dec 09, 2014 Newsdesk Latest News, Singapore, Top of the deck  

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Singapore’s National Council on Problem Gambling is planning to launch a new campaign to address problem gambling. The campaign is expected to run in the first quarter of 2015 across multimedia platforms that include broadcast, print and online.

The council is part of Singapore’s national framework to address problem gambling. One of its main roles is to create public awareness on the harm of problem gambling.

The council has hired Addiction Advertising Pte Ltd as the creative agency for the campaign. It will seek to appeal to the council’s target audience “in a positive manner that conveys hope for recovery while demonstrating how problem gambling can affect one’s family members and encourage help-seeking behaviour among problem gamblers and/or their family and friends,” a press statement said.

Gambling addiction has been one of the main concerns of Singaporean authorities following the legalisation of casinos in the city-state in 2005. In May 2013, S Iswaran, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office and Second Minister for Home Affairs, said Singapore’s Casino Regulatory Authority had stepped up its presence on the gaming floors of the city’s two casino resorts.

At the end of that month, Singapore announced a system whereby individuals, or the family of vulnerable individuals, could apply to the National Council on Problem Gambling to have a limit placed on their casino trips.

In May this year, the government announced it had introduced a centralised system for self-exclusion. In September it was announced that non-casino gaming operators in the city had also joined the scheme.

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