Catarina Basto does a quick count of the instant lottery cards sold in her stationery store in the center of Lisbon. “We have 21 different types, to which are then added the special products that are released for Christmas, Easter or holidays,” she explains. The scratch cards, as the popular game is known in Portugal, can cost from a few cents to 15 euros. Its mechanics are simple (similar to that of the so-called Cumin which is sold in Spain): scratch numbers to see if there is a lucky match with the right to a prize. They are sold everywhere, until last January they could even be bought at post office stalls. An irresistible temptation for retirees who were going to collect their pension at the beginning of the month.
The Government prohibited marketing in the branches of CTT, which manages the postal service, as a result of the study Who Pays Scratch card, funded by the Economic and Social Council in 2023 and which brought to light worrying figures about the addictive potential of this game. Although to tackle this problem gambling, new measures will be required by the Executive that emerges from the early elections that Portugal is holding next Sunday. The report, prepared by seven researchers from the University of Minho, concluded that nearly 100,000 people had “problems” with this lottery and about 30,000 already suffered from a pathological addiction. The data amazed the authors of the work. “We knew that it was a significant problem, but we didn't know that it had such a high incidence,” summarizes Pedro Morgado, professor of Psychiatry at the University of Minho and one of the coordinators of the study along with the economist Luís Aguiar-Conraria, by telephone.
More worrying for Morgado was the predominant portrait among the most players: people with low resources, high ages, little educational training and manual professions. “We saw that gambling especially affects the most vulnerable layers due to several reasons: the rules are easy, it is widely spread in cafes, kiosks and supermarkets, the reward can be immediate and each bet is cheap and creates the impression that it is spent little,” explains Morgado. To this he adds the disturbance created by the indirect publicity of the scratch card every time someone gets a big prize and appears in the media.
At the newsstand he has run for three years near a shopping center in Lisbon, Xavier Sepúlveda verifies some of this data daily, but not all. “The people who buy the most are over 50 years old, but there are clients of all types, from a cleaning employee who takes a scratch card of one euro to a lady who owns many apartments who spends 500 euros every day. “Everyone plays according to their possibilities,” she says. Sepúlveda has observed that the sale of cardboard skyrockets at Christmas due to the custom in recent years of purchasing them as Christmas gifts. He also detected that sales grew during confinement. “With the pandemic was when more tobacco and scratch cards “I sold because of people's anxiety,” he says.
Psychiatrist Pedro Morgado mentions a historical turning point in the evolution of the instant lottery. “In Portugal it began to become popular after the 2008 crisis and especially during the great austerity measures that followed from 2011. In 2014 it took a brutal leap and became the most popular game,” he underlines. Another indirect and poisoned gift from the troika ―the institutional triad formed by the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank―, which intervened in the country's management between 2011 and 2014 in exchange for a bailout of 78 billion euros. The adjustments and cuts of those days impoverished large sections of the population. “The time of the troika had as collateral damage the growth in sales of scratch cards. People turned to them in the hope of finding financial balance for their lives,” explains the researcher from the University of Minho.
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In Portugal, the monopoly of these instant lotteries is in the hands of the Santa Casa de Misericordia, an institution founded in 1498 by Queen Leonor as a brotherhood to help those most in need and which currently develops social, educational and cultural initiatives to groups with fewer resources. The paradox that the institution that uses money to help the most disadvantaged is financed with a product that primarily damages the mental health of these groups is difficult to resolve. “This is a social problem that affects the people that Santa Casa supports the most, who are the most vulnerable and most in need of social and health support,” admitted the head of the institution, Ana Jorge, to the Lusa agency. days after the publication of the study. Jorge offered the organization's collaboration to combat addiction and promote responsible gaming.
The Economic and Social Council study, which will be expanded with two new phases, found that people with monthly incomes between 400 and 664 euros are three times more likely to be frequent buyers than those who earn more than 1,500 euros. Likewise, those over 66 have twice the risk than young people. The researchers also noted a relationship between lottery purchases and alcohol consumption, which favors “disinhibition and difficulties in making decisions that are beneficial to health,” they point out in the conclusions.
The research coordinator does not consider the ban to be a solution. “Whenever we prohibit, the immediate effect is that people switch to other unregulated and more dangerous games,” warns the psychiatrist. Among the alternative measures, he proposes greater control of indirect advertising, the application of self-exclusion mechanisms as exist in other types of games and, in the long term, greater training of people on the risks of gambling disorders in instant lotteries. Morgado praises some decisions of the Government such as the separation of the scratch card of heritage – its funds were allocated to interventions in cultural institutions and encouraged the idea of spending on a good cause – or the prohibition of sales in post offices.
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