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Finland Increasing Slots Minimum Age

Finland is determined to keep those that are underage from developing an addiction to slots, and is making it much harder for that age group to have access to the slots. Currently, more than 65,000 people are addicted to the slots, and suffer from compulsive gambling habits. This amount equals approximately 1.2% of their population, so the government feels that they need to take action to keep the number of addicts from increasing.

The Finland Ministry of Social Affairs and Health has come up with a plan to prevent and treat gambling addiction. One of the things that they will be working on is increasing the minimum age to play the slots from 15 to 18. Finland residents currently only have to be 15 to play the slots, and many think that the number of people addicted to the slots will decrease by changing the number that have access to them.

With slots being very popular in Finland, and the age being so low to play them, they are everywhere. This means that not only do you have those that are 15 playing them, but they are pretty much accessible to other younger age groups as well. The slots are in shopping malls, etc. so they are able to access them. Finland currently has the lowest age limit for slots playing in all of Europe.

There are also problems with getting help once you have developed a problem, so the social services and municipalities are taking steps to combat it on a local level, not just a country level. This is a huge step as currently 46% of them say that they don’t think that the slots addiction is a big problem, nor do they pay much attention to it.

 

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