ANEP launches the campaign against scratch and win dependence, to raise awareness of a growing phenomenon and ask for more prevention and regulation
“The National Association of Professional Educators (ANEP) presents the new awareness campaign” Stop scratching your future, return to live “, to bring to the attention of public opinion and institutions one of the most insidious and underestimated forms of playing addiction: the scratch card and Vinci, second only to online gambling for growth in recent years.
According to the available data, the expenditure of Italians in scratch cards and at play online has tripled between 2019 and 2022. An exponential growth that highlights how much these game modes are becoming pervasive, normalized and dangerously accessible, as well as difficult to identify.
The game of the scratch card today represents a real social emergency, not only for its ability to create addiction, but above all for the context in which it spreads: everywhere, at every hour, without any filter or barrier. Unlike casinos or betting rooms – where restrictions are planned as distances from sensitive places and opening hours, there are access cameras, staff and spending limits – anyone can buy a scratch card in tobacconist, supermarket, newsstand or even automatic distributors. As well as the online game, 24 hours a day is available from any device, with easily circumvented self-exclusion systems.
The danger is in the ease, solitude and discretion with which you can play, especially by the most fragile bands of the population: the elderly, young people, people economically in difficulty. The scratch cards, in particular, are perceived as harmless, but hide an extremely powerful psychological mechanism: small and frequent prizes that lead to trying back immediately, stimulating compulsive behaviors. All this, accompanied by captivating graphics, names that promise luck and messages that feed the illusion of easy winnings.
The Anep campaign aims to dispel the myth of the “innocent” game, highlighting how addiction can arise from daily and apparently trivial gestures. The data and experience of the educators and professional educators who work in the multidisciplinary teams of the services for dependencies, show that more and more people develop serious forms of play addiction and growing the scratch card and win, coming to spend important sums in an uncontrolled way, often without familiar and friends they notice.
To make everything more dangerous is the absence of adequate regulation. While the State introduces restrictions on other types of play, scratch cards and online platforms remain widely available and scarcely controlled, contributing to a disturbing paradox: the state gains from the losses of citizens, promoting the gamble and normalizing it.
With “Stop scratching your future, return to live”, Anep wants to send a strong message: recognizing the problem is the first step to deal with it and return to a life without addiction. The campaign is aimed at all citizens but also to the institutions, so that it is also invested in education, prevention and regulation, and the figure of the professional educator is recognized as a key resource in the contrasting, recovery and support paths.
The scratch cards are not a board game, but gambling and albeit legal are a real and growing danger. It’s time to stop, reflect and act all together. “
So in a note the National Association of Professional Educators (ANEP) announced its social campaign.
