Sweden has launched a new inquiry aimed at strengthening protection against gambling harm among children and young adults, with particular attention to boys and young men. The government appointed Zandra Milton, the chief legal officer at Karolinska Institutet, as special investigator.
As covered in July, Sweden’s regulator separately warned that influencers and social platforms were being used to reach younger audiences with unlicensed gambling. The new assignment asks Milton to map marketing by licensed and unlicensed operators and to study gambling habits in both markets.
Health minister Elisabet Lann said gambling problems are a serious and rapidly growing social problem. She said risky gambling among young men has doubled in just a few years and that one in five is affected.
Lann said the aim is to prevent gambling from leading to ill health, debt or being drawn into crime. Financial markets minister Niklas Wykman said a safe and healthy gambling market requires both the state and gambling companies to take responsibility. Gender equality minister Nina Larsson said boys and young men are greatly overrepresented among those who get caught up in gambling addiction, and that preventing problematic gambling in that group is a gender-equality issue.
The inquiry will also examine whether the gambling market is being used to find and exploit vulnerable young people for criminal activities, map efforts to limit access to lottery or casino features in computer games, analyse rules in other countries and consider extra steps such as reviewing the financial situation of young players and setting mandatory time limits. It will weigh those options against the risk of illegal gambling operators.
There is also a longer public-health backdrop. A 2014 Swedish school survey study found gambling among adolescents to be highly gendered, with boys gambling more often than girls, and described excessive gambling as a growing concern linked to financial problems, strained relationships, criminal behaviour, depression and higher suicide risk. The inquiry is due to report by 29 February 2028.
