Do you think having a casino or any gambling center close to an institution of learning, will influence the students somehow or should I say be a positive or negative reinforcement on them, in anyway?
Thoughts?
I don't have to think much... In Serbia, according to the law, the distance between casinos and schools cannot be less than 200 meters. There are several cases where this was violated... but does that serve any purpose when there are advertisements everywhere, is 200 enough?
According to the Directorate for Games of Chance, 2,987 locations where games of chance are held are registered in Serbia. According to experts from the Addiction Treatment Clinic, every third teenager in Serbia is addicted to gambling, and the youngest is only seven years old.
Which is perhaps not strange, considering that there is almost no street in Belgrade where at least one billboard does not have an advertisement for casinos/bookmakers.
I think an even bigger problem is that there is no real education about what gambling really is, at least not here in my country. It's all on an individual level, most learn from their mistakes... it's probably something that should be taken much more seriously.