A study published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine claims to reveal a surge in gambling addiction following the legalization of sports betting. But does a rise in internet searches for gambling terms mean there's been an actual increase in gambling addiction?
After the Supreme Court struck down the Professional Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) in 2018, states were allowed to legalize gambling on sports—since then, 38 states and the District of Columbia have some form of legal sports betting. With the rise of legal sports betting, there's been an explosion of articles, podcasts, and studies about the potential harms of legalization.
On the surface, the study from researchers at the University of California San Diego Qualcomm Institute and School of Medicine appears to lend weight to these concerns, showing a cumulative increase of 23 percent in internet searches nationwide, relative to a counterfactual model, for help with gambling addiction as measured from 2018 through June 2024. But contrary to the study's press release, these results do not show a "surge in gambling addiction."
