Ontario ER gambling visits nearly double after 2022 betting opening

TORONTO — Emergency-department visits tied to gambling disorders are running nearly twice as high as researchers say they would have been if Ontario had not opened online betting to private operators, and the extra load is landing on hospitals already short of staff. The study measures visits against the path expected without the 2022 expansion — a policy association, not proof that Queen’s Park caused addiction.A paper published Wednesday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and released through the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences reviewed 952 ER visits by 757 patients between January 2012 and June 2025 in which a gambling disorder was the main or contributing reason for care. By June 2025, the overall rate was 99% higher than that expected path, and the rise was confined to males aged 10 to 44.The sharpest jump was among males aged 10 to 29, where visits ran 154% above the expected line. Men aged 30 to 44 were 116% higher. Researchers found no comparable increase among females. Ontario’s legal betting age is 19, so the largest spike includes boys aged 10 to 18 who are barred from every licensed site — and still show up in hospital data.More than 70% of the visits involved another mental-health condition or heavy substance use, and about one-third ended in a hospital admission. Co-author Dr. Daniel Myran, a University of Toronto physician and ICES scientist, told CTV News the recorded ER cases are “the tip of the iceberg,” because most problem gambling never reaches an emergency department. .Ontario opened PlayOLG in 2012, then in April 2022 let private companies into the market and legalized single-event sports betting. iGaming Ontario now oversees more than 80 licensed sites. Researchers cited 2.6 million player accounts and $82.7 billion in wagers in 2024. Industry data put operator revenue that year at about $3.2 billion. Casino products, not sportsbooks, now account for most of the handle. The regulator does not publish operator-by-operator market share.Queen’s Park takes a cut of that market through iGaming Ontario while hospitals treat the fallout under a public system already reporting unemployed new nurses and closed beds. A separate CMAJ paper in March found ConnexOntario gambling-related calls from men and boys rose 95.5% between PlayOLG’s launch and September 2025. Taxpayers fund both the betting regulator and the emergency department that now logs the surge.Myran said online products and sports-betting ads are built to reach young men. The Ford government has treated the private market as a jobs-and-revenue file. Wednesday’s paper notes these ER visits remain uncommon in raw counts.What it shows is a measured rise after the 2022 opening, concentrated in young males — including minors — with co-occurring mental-health and substance harm that hospitals, not betting firms, are left to treat.

Ontario ER gambling visits nearly double after 2022 betting opening

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