Responsible Gambling Research and Advocacy Orgs: Multiple Groups Addressing Issues Tied to Gambling

This is a field guide to a sector that barely existed at this scale five years ago, and the fact that it needs a field guide is itself the story. When legal wagering expands this fast, a counter-infrastructure has to grow with it — researchers, advocates, clinicians, policy shops — and this piece is a useful map of who’s actually building it, from CASPR’s first-in-the-world GLP-1 addiction-medication pilots to the Kindbridge/UCLA financial-harm initiative whose new report we covered separately.

The development we’d call genuinely significant: Canada is writing its first clinical practice guidelines for problematic youth gambling. Greo’s Health Canada–funded project means a clinician seeing a 17-year-old in crisis will, for the first time, have evidence-based, stage-appropriate guidance — in both official languages. Right now that guidance simply doesn’t exist, anywhere, for one of the fastest-growing harm populations. The U.S. should be taking notes. Professional treatment standards maturing is good news for everyone in recovery: peer support and clinical care work best as partners, not alternatives.

One thread to watch with clear eyes: the piece revisits the NCPG’s decision to bring Kalshi into its membership — a partnership we’ve covered critically before. The NCPG’s policy director defends it as meeting harm where it’s occurring; critics see a conflict of interest. Both can be a little bit true, which is exactly why an independent research layer — the Greos and CASPRs of the world, funded outside industry — matters so much.