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The game is a gold mine for the state coffers. According to the latest available data, in 2016 Italians spent 96 billion euros between videolottery, bingo, virtual betting, sports predictions and other games of chance, with a equal treasure entry to 10 billion . Of these, over half came from slot machine taxes, while $ 1.8 billion came from Lotto and 1.3 from Scratch and Win. If it calculates that the gains were redistributed for 77 billion, it means that Italians lost up to 19 billion euros in 2016. Why, it is always good to remember, what that is the probability of winning, who still really wins the bench
The Podcast created by the students of the School of Journalism of the Catholic University of Milan
What makes this industry profitable, so it's the myriad of people who try their luck every day. However, many people are not able to control themselves: in Italy, about 12,000 people are treated for the treatment of ludopathy ; it's only the tip of an iceberg, which does not make the actual number of problem gamblers.
The Testimony on Addiction
"I love the game, I will love the game and I will die with the game." But I treat him as an old lover: I got him, I kept him and I left him "- says a former ludopatico, who wants to remain anonymous. constant earnings as improbable as attractive: "When I was little, I went to the bingo halls, and then I started playing seriously for a while, even while attending the gambling dens. I then devoted myself to the casino and the slot machines, until I decided to stop because I was ruining my family and my inheritance. "
After all, we know that the game reduces the living standard of ludopatico and his family unit. It must be emphasized, however, that the real economy, stolen with precious resources, is lost: the compulsive actor limits its spending capacity to obvious damage to the economic and commercial circuit. What can a person then push to entrust his savings to the blindfolded goddess?
Vulnerable
For psychiatrist Federico Baranzini, "there is a segment of the population that is more exposed to the risk of developing addiction. According to statistics, players belong to a lower socio-cultural or socio-economic band, have less years of education or are precarious jobs. These are less fortunate people who can find in the game a kind of revenge. It is a revenge on life to have an area in which one has the subjective feeling of being able to control the fortune . This gives a very powerful narcissistic return. "
The former ludopatico explains us more precisely this perverse mechanism:" At the beginning there is the emotion of winning the figure. After, over time, you understand that the real emotion is losing so that you can then have those 30 seconds of adrenaline for whatever you win. "And he adds:" Playful illness is not a disease that causes physical damage, as it could be the case for the alcoholic, the toxic. The player is fine, well, and is good even when he is sick. "
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The game "black" and criminal organizations
This is not just a personal issue: the game is a complex universe, where laws, regulations, lobbies and even illegality coexist. The latest report of the Anti-Mafia Parliamentary Committee on this sector revealed that in 2015, a total of 36 million euros were concealed from the tax authorities. Even the figures of the Guardia di Finanza speak for themselves: the same year, nearly 6,000 checks were carried out all over Italy, which allowed to seize 576 irregular machines and to discover more 1,200 illegal collection points.
In the illegal case even criminal organizations have found space, which benefits in different ways: from the activity of extortion in the legal gambling halls to the widespread imposition of video poker machines in public institutions; from infiltration in companies to nominees, collection and management of online sports betting.
State vs. mafia
Don Luigi Ciotti is not afraid to reiterate it : "It was wrongly believed that if the state had extended, controlled and managed the offer of the game legal, the presence of illegality would have been opposed, but it was not like that. This sector unfortunately shows that it is still permeable, vulnerable with a presence of areas of opacity that allow criminal organizations to easily enter and make huge profits . But the interests of the mafia also extend to the legal gambling, which, although managed by individuals through the system of concessions, is still exercised in the name of the state. "
So many victims of the game, that they are illegal or pathological. If the war against the first belongs primarily to the state, the game remains for many a daily battle to be willingly delivered in the darkness of others because guilt consumes you, and it's a strong fear or shame of To confess to their loved ones an unstoppable impulse. How to cure then? The first step is to recognize dependence, then – duly badisted by specialized facilities and following specific care – we must fight and always fight day after day.
The former ludopatico confirms: " The game gave me three things : freedom, responsibility, and the ability to choose. I have finished washing myself, I look in the mirror and I wonder: "What am I doing today?" Today, first of all, I do not want to go play, so for the rest of my life, what will be. "
(*) The authors of this article are students of the School of Journalism of the Catholic University of Milan
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