In a state with more betting shops than pharmacies, the past year has shown that gambling is serious business. The five largest companies collected over 120 million euros in profit. While the number of bookmakers grows, and the payments do not decrease, the question remains: whose profit is it actually
Monitoring of advertising in the press in the last three months of 2024 shows that the most advertised in Serbian tabloids are Telekom Srbija, bookmakers, Pogrebne usluge and the State Lottery of Serbia, and TV Pink is the leader among the media that pay for ads.
Problems related to the large number of casinos and betting shops, as well as the lack of other social activities for young people, are something that many towns and cities in Serbia are facing. Aleksinac is one of them. Why are young people more susceptible to falling into this vicious circle? Is the solution just to move the betting shop a little further from the school?
Serving food and alcoholic beverages with more than five percent alcohol in betting shops and slot clubs is also prohibited
There are about 3.600 betting shops in Serbia, which is almost double the number of primary and secondary schools. In smaller towns, besides bakeries and pharmacies, they are mostly the only facilities. But today physical bookmakers are not even needed to develop a gambling addiction as more and more young people are gambling online. What do (not) bring new legal solutions
Referring to the research conducted by the Institute for Public Health of Serbia "Dr. Milan Jovanović Batut", Dr. Ivica Mladenović tells "Vreme" that about 0.9 percent of adults in Serbia are addicted to gambling, which is about 50.000 gamblers who need hospital treatment . And in order to get the number of those who are at risk of developing an addiction disease, that number needs to be multiplied by five, thus arriving at the number of 200.000-250.000 people who are potentially at risk.
Serbia is at the top of Europe in terms of the number of casinos and betting shops per capita. Psychotherapist Jelena Manojlović claims that the number of betting shops in Serbia is much higher than reported and that the betting shops are designed to attract new gamblers. Games of chance are advertised by celebrities, are available on every corner and are easily accessible to children
A petition is in progress, which requests that the casinos of Vračar be less visible, in order to reduce their harmful impact on society, and so that they do not turn this municipality into a fair. Also, the residents of Vračar submitted a petition to the Government yesterday with the request to adopt without any further delay the decision on the determination of Krunska Street and Kotež Neimar as a spatial cultural-historical entity.
"Your winning return", "Now or never", are just some of the messages that lurk potential gamblers at every turn. The mother of an addict tells "Vreme" that the problem is that the law does not recognize pathological gambling as a disease like alcoholism or drug addiction.
How are the Progressives doing, and how is the opposition? We don't know, and the question is whether pollsters know either, because public opinion polls have become an almost impossible mission
What do the agencies' data say - how are the parties doing, who passes the census, who will get the most votes in Belgrade? How reliable is this data anyway? What are all the problems when doing surveys? What can be seen more clearly in those polls than the ratings of the parties themselves? What are the odds at the bookmakers? And why is the situation in Belgrade different than in the rest of Serbia
"Betting shops in Serbia further deepen the problem of people's poverty, depression among vulnerable groups, cause addiction among young people and facilitate money laundering," the Center for Local Self-Government pointed out.
Younger and younger people are coming to treatment for gambling, and treatment is made more difficult by the fact that betting shops have sprung up like mushrooms at every turn of public transport, at every junction and in every free bar. It is unusually difficult to change lifestyle habits when challenges are aggressively present in the media and physical environment
In our country, there is no systematic approach to the problem of pathological gambling, and there is no developed awareness in society about possible harmful consequences. Stigmatization also plays a big role. The Ministry of Health mostly pretends to be blind and deaf, and there is a lot that they could and should do. In that spiral of silence in which individuals and families suffer, we, who are affected, try to create such an environment that our family members will one day make a decision to start the fight against addiction slavery and that the community will support them in this
