THE DUTCH INSTANT LOTTERY - PREVALENCE AND CORRELATES OF AT-RISK PLAYING

After a long and contentious political debate, the instant lottery was introduced in the Netherlands in 1994. One of the conditions for allo wing the introduction was that an evaluation study should be conducted with regard to possible negative side effects of the instant lottery in terms of excessive playing or addiction. This article reports on th e main results of this evaluation study. In a random sample of 4497 in stant lottery players, at-risk players were differentiated from recrea tive players on the basis of level of involvement in the instant lotte ry, impaired control and the experienced negative consequences of play ing. Of the sample, 4.1% could be classified as an at-risk player. Act ual problems resulting from playing in the instant lottery were experi enced by 0.7% of the players. At-risk players and recreative players d id not only differ substantially in their playing behaviour, bur also with regard to their socio-economic background, playing motivation, pa rticipation in other games of chance, and involvement in alcohol use a nd use of marijuana. To summarize, at-risk players were more likely to come from a poor socio-economic background, to play the instant lotte ry with a negative playing motivation, to be heavily involved in other forms of gambling, to have used marijuana and to drink alcohol excess ively.