Most Americans See Gambling Addiction as a Public Health Issue. Washington Doesn’t – Yet.

By Heather L. Maurer, MA, CAE, Executive Director, National Council on Problem Gambling

For decades, problem gambling has been dismissed as a character flaw, a failure of willpower, or a shameful weakness rather than a mental health condition to be treated. That stigma has kept people from seeking help and policymakers from acting. Today, according to a national Harris Poll survey commissioned by the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG), nearly four in five Americans believe problem gambling is as serious as or more serious than alcohol or drug addiction. That is a meaningful cultural shift. And it makes the federal government’s inaction to date all the more inexcusable.

Congress now has a straightforward opportunity to respond. The bipartisan Providing Opportunities for Individuals In Need of Treatment & Support (POINTS) Act, introduced this month by a bi-partisan group of members of House of Representatives, would create the first dedicated federal funding stream for problem gambling prevention, treatment, and recovery. It doesn’t raise taxes. It simply redirects one-third of the federal excise tax on sports wagers — revenue the federal government is already collecting and which we estimate exceeded $300 million in fiscal year 2025 alone — into the infrastructure this crisis demands. The need is clear, and the mechanism is already in place. Congress should pass the POINTS Act without delay.

According to the American Gaming Association, Americans are expected to legally wager $3.3 billion on the 2026 NCAA basketball tournaments alone, a 54% increase over the past three years. As legal gambling expands and new digital betting products like prediction markets proliferate, the need for prevention and treatment infrastructure is growing just as quickly.

The urgency is real. Nearly 20 million Americans — 8 percent of adults — report experiencing indicators of a gambling problem many times in the past year. Behind those numbers are families in financial crisis, relationships fractured by secrecy and debt, and people who sought help but found none. The estimated social cost of problem gambling in the United States is $14 billion annually. Yet, the federal investment in addressing this problem is zero.

States, left to manage this crisis alone after decades of federal inaction, have responded unevenly at best. Some have built modest treatment programs funded by a mere slice of gambling revenues. Others have done almost nothing. Alaska, Alabama, Hawaii, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Utah, Texas, and the District of Columbia have failed to dedicate state level funding for problem gambling, even as most of these states permit legalized gambling. The message to anyone who develops a problem is unambiguous: the government was glad to license and tax the industry; it has no interest in the consequences.

Even where problem gambling programs exist, they are siloed and underfunded, with no national standard of care and no way to ensure that someone in crisis in one state receives anything like the support available in another. The POINTS Act would establish a competitive federal grant program administered through SAMHSA, giving states, tribes, and tribal organizations the stable, coordinated funding they need to build or expand programs that work. The POINTS Act lays the foundation for a national response that currently does not exist.

The federal leadership cannot be justified. Gambling disorder is classified in the DSM-5 as an addictive disorder, sharing neurological pathways with substance use disorders. The symptoms include loss of control, preoccupation, escalation, continued behavior despite serious harm, are clinically analogous. Substance use disorders are roughly seven times more prevalent than gambling disorders in the United States. Yet public funding for substance use services is 338 times greater.

Protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that apply to people recovering from substance use disorders do not reliably extend to people experiencing gambling addiction, leaving many without workplace protections available to those facing other recognized addictions. The POINTS Act would begin closing this gap, fund treatment, and equally important screening, early intervention, and the training that would allow the broader health system to identify and respond to people at risk.

The problem is also getting younger, and that should alarm everyone. Two-thirds of Americans aged 21 and older report having gambled before they turned 21, and 66% of adults say they are concerned about youth exposure to gambling and gambling-like activities. Prevention programs designed to reach young people exist, but most states simply lack the funding for widespread implementation.

Sports betting apps, online casinos, and gambling-adjacent features in video games have placed these experiences in front of our adolescents and young adults at a scale that existing frameworks were never built to handle. A recent analysis by NCPG and Vixio found that U.S. states meet, on average, only 32 of the 82 player protection standards outlined in NCPG’s Internet Responsible Gambling Standards. The window for early intervention is closing. Federal funding for prevention and youth-focused programming — exactly what the POINTS Act would support — is long overdue.

Rare in today’s Congress, the POINTS Act has true bipartisan support, introduced by Republicans and Democrats from Indiana, Oregon, Louisiana, and Iowa. It is the first bipartisan federal legislation in 15 years aimed at the general population affected by problem gambling.

Americans have come to recognize problem gambling as a public health issue. The federal government has not kept pace. Congress now has an opportunity to close that gap and build the first national safety net for millions of Americans at risk. The POINTS Act deserves swift passage.