Pressure to change law as 9-year-olds buy Lotto tickets

A study of 900 Pasifika children, aged 9 years old and living in New Zealand, found 7% of them had bought a Lotto ticket, RNZ reveals. The only age limit on Lotto’s games is an R-18 restriction on Instant Kiwi. “It just normalises gambling behaviour as being something that anyone can do,” says Maria Bellringer, director of Auckland University of Technology’s Gambling and Addictions Research Centre. The study cites previous research on New Zealand adults which found that “having first gambled before the age of 13 years was a strong risk factor for lifetime problem gambling”.