U.S. Senators Katie Britt, R-Alabama, and Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, led a bipartisan letter Thursday with several of their colleagues to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, urging the department to further study the alarming rise in sports gambling among America’s youth and the potential adverse effects on teens and young adults.
“We write to urge the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, to study how America’s youth are being impacted by the rapid rise of sports gambling across America,” the senators wrote.
Senators Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina; Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire; and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, joined Britt and Durbin in signing the letter.
The senators continued, “Since the legalization of sports gambling in the United States, there has been limited research examining the extent to which minors are accessing sports betting platforms—whether through illegal access of legitimate platforms or through illegitimate offshore operations. However, the few existing studies are deeply troubling.”
The senators wrote: “We believe policymakers and American families deserve to know the extent to which our children are engaging in potentially addictive and detrimental behavior.”
They continue by writing how the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, YRBSS, is used as a tool every two years to gauge the priority of health-risk behaviors in American children. As part of the request in the letter, they ask that the CDC “develop and incorporate questions about gambling by children, and in particular sports gambling, to give policymakers and families a better understanding of how, and to what extent, sports gambling is harming our children.”
Britt recently led a separate bipartisan letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, urging the Department of Justice to take robust action on illegal offshore gaming operations targeting minors.
