South African schoolkids gambling for drugs

Good online casinos have checks to ensure that underage children cannot gamble but in Durban South Africa kids as young as 10 are gambling for money and drugs in their schools according to Niven Naidoo of Gamblers Anonymous and it often results in stealing from parents to fund the activity or even violence between the children. It is believed that the kids get involved in gambling groups and are encouraged to play using bottle tops, and matchboxes to represent money. Rather than conventional casino games, they are playing a form of “find the lady” where a 2 Rand coin is placed in a matchbox and they have to guess in which box the money is; they are gambling for 10 or even 20 Rand at a time and often end up losing 50 to 100 Rand a day. In another variation the children place a particular drug on the table and they then play cards with the winner taking all the drugs. More than 20 children have been caught gambling at Durban schools in the past couple of months. South African Police Service spokesman Superintendant Vincent Mdunge promised a tough stance but also admitted that it was made difficult by the fact that these are minors and the best way to resolve the problem is to encourage them to come forward with information rather than succumb to peer pressure.   Joan van Niekerk of Childline also supports counselling at this stage before it becomes a serious issue as they get older. This just reinforces the argument put forward by Carol O’Hare in Nevada that banning online casinos achieves nothing; if somebody wants to gamble they will find a way to do it.