STEVE RUDDOCK: You are listening to the Talking Shop podcast. Today's guest is Harry Levant, the director of gambling policy at the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University. So Harry, why don't you tell everybody listening how you got into, well, you're not into gambling, but you are gambling adjacent as you're trying to rein in the excesses of the industry.
HARRY LEVANT: History, Steve, it's good to be with you again. I think the first part of your question is probably necessary. To answer the second part of the question, I got into gambling originally because I made my first bet when I was 15. I went to the casino for the first time when I was 16 years old, never had a healthy relationship with gambling. But to summarize that part of the story I gambled for, it's been a part of 30 years, resulting in a real cataclysmic year of 2013, where I was just caught in the grips of a what could only be described as a pathological gambling addiction. It took my heart, my brain, my mind, my soul, my conscience, everything. I had been a lawyer in Philadelphia as a trial lawyer for 23 years. Twenty-two of them I remember fondly, the last year just obliterated in a haze of that pathological gambling addiction.
And when I ran out of my money and all the money that I could borrow and all the debt that I could take on to continue gambling, I had access to what we call OPM—Other People's Money. I was a lawyer whose clients trusted them and I violated that trust over a good 8- to 12-month period where I was gambling with other people's money, resulting in ultimately my last bet on April 27th, 2014, a surviving a near suicide attempt that same night and launching the ongoing journey and recovery that I'm proud to be in today. Along the way, in February of 2015, pled guilty to 13 financial felonies. One individual was sentenced to 11.5–23 months in jail for a financial misdemeanor. And on the day of my sentencing, I had just a really fortuitous, lucky thing happen. I had a judge who understood and cared about addiction and matched my casino records up to all the financial records of the money I had misappropriated, and realized that I had not taken anything for myself.
Every penny that I misappropriated, I lost to gambling. I was, I think the court that day said you were trying to kill yourself, the only way you knew how. And in court that day, in the presence of the clients whose trust I had betrayed in front of a court where I had practiced law for two decades, and my father had practiced law before me for almost five decades. And in the presence of my kids with tears running down their faces, I made a pledge that if I could get well and at that point in time, it was a big if, but if I could get well, I would do everything in my power to prevent other people from suffering a similar fate. And that was February of 2015. And on that sentencing day, the judge sentenced me to 11 and a half to 23 months in jail but also granted me immediate parole in the courtroom with an instruction that I was to continue my mental health treatment and that this didn't have to be the end, that there could be another day.
And I took those words as a calling along with the pledge that I made under oath that day, and I do my best each day to continue to honor it at present. After about four years in intensive treatment with an addiction psychologist by the name of Jeremy Frank in Philadelphia, a great, great addiction psychologist, I realized I'd become about the healthiest version of myself I ever was. So it was sort of shitted good off the pot time. And I went to LaSalle University, interviewed for a seat in their professional clinical counseling and counseling psychology program, and was offered a seat in that program by an unbelievably brilliant woman by the name of Donna Tory. Donna is a therapist. She has every doctorate in mental health you could want. She got a PsyD, a doctorate in marriage and family therapy, and a doctorate in counseling. And on the first day, I met her to interview for the program.
I laid my whole story out for about 40 minutes. I didn't think there was any way in the world LaSalle University would want me, and at the end of telling Donna my story, Dr. Tori, my story, she said something to me that continues to inspire me today. She said to me, Harry, your story is the least interesting thing about you. What's actually interesting is what you're trying to do with your story. Your story is five minutes of chatter at a cocktail party. But beyond that, the fascinating part is the vision you have of what you want to do with it. So come here, get trained as a therapist, and see what it leads you to. I looked at her. I said, Dr. Tori, what do you mean? Come here. I haven't been accepted. She said, You're currently not listed. I'm the director of the program.
I have reason to believe you'll get in. And I did. Graduated from LaSalle with a master's in professional clinical counseling and went into practice treating people struggling with gambling addiction, and something didn't sit right with me. We're now up to early COVID era 2020, 2021ish, and I realized I'm now treating people for the same condition that nearly took my life and caused me to inflict such devastating pain on so many people. But I'm not doing anything about the problem. I'm sort of now benefiting from the system, and it doesn't sit right with me. So I made a decision I needed to put some research into this, and that I would get a doctorate. I didn't have a clue what a doctor, it was not a clue in the land, but found this program at Northeastern University, a doctorate in law and public policy, and it's designed specifically for professionals who've been in the field for 10 years or longer who want to research an area that they consider to be an important public policy area of concern.
I submitted the widespread growth of gambling, specifically online gambling, was accepted into the program, and last year earned that doctorate by putting out some research about the public health risk of online gambling. And that led me to a position with the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University School of Law, founded by Dick Dard, the legend who brought public health to big tobacco. And under Dick's leadership and Mark Gottlieb, our executive director, Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI) has decided to use its full force and resources to work toward bringing public health reform to a public health approach to regulating the gambling industry. So I now sort of wear three hats. I'm proud, probably proudest of being a person in recovery coming up on 11 years. I am a private practice therapist treating people who struggle with gambling disorder, and I'm the director of gambling policy at PHAI, where we are helping lead the mission to bring a comprehensive public health response to the gambling industry. So that's a long answer to a short question, but it covers most of it.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, there are a lot of interesting things in that. I think to me, though, the one thing that really stands out is when you said, I felt like I was benefiting from the system at play. It's something I bring up in my newsletter a bit, which is there's incentives to keep the status quo to make it feel like change is being made and everybody that's in the industry in the RG field, I won't say everybody, but everybody I have spoken with has good intentions, but there is, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head. There is an underlying aspect of it where there's a lot more funding now. It is a career path now in that field, but the career path almost necessitates that huge changes aren't made. I mean.
HARRY LEVANT: Yeah, I've obviously met, we've met, we know many of the same people. I would say that RG responsible gaming was an ethically flawed model when it was created in the late eighties and the nineties, it became more ethically flawed when the Reno model studies came out in the early two thousands. It's even more scientifically and ethically flawed today because of two fundamental things. One is that we've known for 12 years that gambling's an addictive product just like heroin, opioids, tobacco, alcohol, and cocaine. We've known this for at least 12 years. The second piece is that there's a whole new product that exists now that never existed before, which delivers this known addictive product at light speed to every phone, tablet, and computer through the use of artificial intelligence. It really is machine versus man. Now, if you bring all of those facts in and you start with something that I submit was ethically flawed at its inception, it remains ethically flawed, but it's now both ethically and scientifically flawed.
It is a flawed system, and the industry and its sports and media partners benefit from that system. Full stop. With that said, they benefit from maintaining the status quo. With that said, virtually all of the people I have been privileged to meet in what we're going to call for right now, the RG field, are people who are looking to do good, but they're looking to do good at a flawed system. I'm hoping to bring a new approach and work with these folks because I agree with you, the overwhelming majority of the people that I have met, not everyone in the space, they don't see everyone, but the overwhelming majority of the people I have met are good caring human beings trying to do right, but they're stuck in a system where the status quo is maintained and harm continues to increase.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, it's difficult because you learn to play games by the rules that you're presented with, and right now everybody in the space is playing under a certain set of rules and they're trying to stay within guardrails, and I almost think sometimes the laws and regulations almost prevent companies from going outside the buoys to actually try to innovate in the field or try something new because you'll get your hand slapped by the ruler, right? There's a certain level of where you have to do these things, but we have no evidence that those things actually do anything.
HARRY LEVANT: I agree in part and disagree in part. I think the people who are working for these companies would like to do more. I think the companies and the industry and their relationship with sports and media has been very clear that they are pushing this model state by state, by state, the resistance that the public health mission receives across the board from the industry is telling. So if we're going to talk about the people who work in these positions, people you and I both know, I think they absolutely would like to do more, and they are constrained by the model in which they work. However, at the state level, thus far, and at the industry and sports levels, I have seen zero interest in saying we need to change. Change is going to have to be thrust upon them, and it's happening in real time now, and as that happens, you'll see some cracks in the armor. But I disagree with you that the industry is looking to do more. In fact, I think it's 180 degrees the opposite. The industry, state by state, pushes this ethically flawed and scientifically challenged RG model because it works for them. It places the entire onus on the individual and distracts from the need to regulate. You've heard me say this before: RG is pulling people out of the river after they're drowning. Public health is let's create some guardrails so people don't fall in that river in the first place.
STEVE RUDDOCK: So that's a good segue into the Safe BET Act, which, so everyone will know. When I recorded this now press conference yesterday, reintroducing it, there's a few changes to the bill, and this goes to your point of the state by state approach just doesn't really work for something of this magnitude, which is you have some states that might have robust regulations, other states that might have less robust, and then you have a lot of wishy-washy things that happen. Every state law is crafted in a way with enormous loopholes. They just throw. One of the things that I've harped about is just the use of the word celebrity. What is a celebrity? I don't understand what you even mean by that. So there are all of these things. So, the Safe Bet Act is a federal bill looking to rein in the excesses of the us, the legal U.S. sports betting industry. So could you kind of explain the genesis of the Safe Bet Act, how you guys came up with it, what was the process for it, and then what's new in 2025?
HARRY LEVANT: You're actually the first person to ask me to explain the genesis of it, and I would be really proud to share a little detail that I don't think has been made public enough. And this goes back, I'm going to say to early 2022, I received an invitation at PHAI from Congressman Paul Tonko from New York to participate in a roundtable discussion. He was beginning to look at issues related to gambling, addiction, and mental health. Congressman Tonko has been a leader in the prevention and treatment of addiction, other mental health disorders. He's the cochair of the Congress Addiction Treatment and Recovery Caucus, and he convened something he called a talk with Tonko. It was a roundtable, 12, 14 people on a Zoom call with the congressman and one of his legislative aides, a person by the name of Darion Beck. We had a discussion about what's right and what's wrong.
There were a lot of RG people on there, and I was the one voice from the public health side saying to the congressman that I thought the RG model was not only flawed but fatally flawed. There needed to be a different approach, and it gave a preview of what I thought a public health approach would be about. Didn't really expect to hear anything further from the congressman. About two weeks later, he called me and he said he had really done some research, was impressed by the idea that there could be a public health response instead of just this more traditional responsible gaming model. And he asked if I would come down to DC and meet with him and talk about some legislative ideas, which I did. And at that time, they were looking at the betting on our Future Act, which was a ban on advertising, but became much more comfortable with Congressman Tonko.
I consider him a friend now, and I extended an invitation to him to come and meet some of my patients in my treatment group. I treat people both individually and do group therapy work on gambling disorder. The congressman accepted the invitation. I thought that he would maybe stop by for 10 minutes, quite the opposite. It was very, very impressive. I picked him up at the train station, 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, got off Amtrak from DC. He lives up near the Albany area. He got off in Philadelphia, drove him to my office about 20 minutes, and figured those were the 20 minutes I would have his ear. It was quite wrong. He spent more than three hours just listening to my patients, telling their stories. He asked a ton of insightful questions. It was a very emotional meeting. I don't want to speak for the congressman, but I experienced as it fundamentally changed his view on this because on the way back to the train station, he said to me, I pledge to remain involved with this and work to bring public health reform we shouldn't be doing to people the kinds of things I just heard.
And he has been steadfast in his determination. That led to last year spending a good portion of 2024 with my colleagues, Dick Dan and Mark Gottlieb at PHAI, helping write the original Safe Bet Act, which was introduced in September of last year, and sort of knew that the initial bill wouldn't go too far because that Congress was coming to an end. But what it really did was, I think, fantastic. It ended up resulting in a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by then Chairman Dick Durbin, ranking member Senator Lindsey Graham. And that day, I think Senator Tom Tillis was in the ranking member's chair, and we had a hearing that was at least partly focused on for anyone who saw it. It was at least partly focused on what a public health approach could mean. And that has now led to the 2025 version of the Safe Bet Act, which we reintroduced yesterday.
So we can talk about the things it had before and the new things that it has. It addresses VIP programs and tier programs. It addresses, why am I forgetting? One of the new things. It addresses VIP and tier programs. It creates a framework for the federal government, state government, and the gambling industry to shut down offshore sportsbooks. The federal government identifies offshore operators. It then requires states and the industry to work together in issuing cease and desist letters. So it brings all three of the important players to one place, the federal government, states, and the industry, to work in concert to shut down offshore sports books. Something I fundamentally want to help be a part of. And the third new piece is a requirement that with micro betting and all of these parlays and same game parlays where the industry presently is advertising just the potential payout requires when someone goes to make a same game parlay or a micro bed, a micro parlay, that the industry has to disclose what it has calculated, the actual odds of that payoff to be. So it's an arms-length transaction with the consumer, and then it has all the other public health issues, which I'm sure we'll talk about today as well.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, the third piece is interesting to me. So there are certain states that require slot machines to put return RTP, the return to player, on the machine, and that's basically the same thing. What you're seeing is telling the customer, listen, the privilege of placing the bet that costs you this much money, that this is what you can expect to get from that bet, that obviously might change the way they offer right now, there's a very high hold percentage. I would like to see that on everything, because like lottery scratch-off tickets, I mean, I'd love to see that. I would love to see on just lottery tickets and just when they say, here's the jackpot and they don't tell you, well, here's your tax obligation to that jackpot that you're going to pay twice, by the way, those are the things that I think would be a little bit helpful to the consumer, more so than just, I mean, I'm not bashing this in any way. I think this is definitely an important part, but I think those are more helpful to the consumer than just saying, do you have a problem? Right, you're getting in over your head, right? Those are just terms that anybody can relate to in their life. So, having just that general, here's what you can expect from this. It would almost be like if you bought a car and they said, you can expect to get 25,000 miles out of this, and then the thing's going to start falling apart.
HARRY LEVANT: It's interesting you bring up the requirement with a certain lottery. What are the actual chances of a winning ticket? All of these, all of the things we're going to talk about the Safe Bet Act, are part of an overall approach to prevent harm before it occurs. So I think it's important that we talk about the framework for it and why each of the things that are in the Safe Bet Act are in there for a reason. The macro reason is to, as you were describing, prevent people from suffering gambling-related harm before it occurs. I struggle with how we keep hearing statistics about, well, how many people are addicted, for some reason we've sort of taken it for granted in the RG model that, all right, well, wait until people get addicted, then we'll treat them. Look, I'm all for treatment. I'm a clinician. I want maximum access to treatment, but what I'm really trying to do is put my practice out of business.
I don't want people to suffer. So the focus here should be on preventing gambling-related harm because harm occurs on a continuum before you reach the diagnostic level. By the time someone reaches the diagnostic threshold for gambling disorder, they have often suffered irreparable harm themselves and their family. So the issue isn't how do we just prevent addiction? The issue is how to let people enjoy this product? Let the industry make a profit and keep the public safe. So you talk about disclosing odds. Remember those games, McDonald's would have all the time we had to get the puzzle pieces. They had to tell you on the back of those puzzle pieces what the odds are of finding Willy Wonka's golden ticket. Here I just opened up on my phone a ridiculous four-leg parlay for a basketball game tonight, and it shows plus 1100. You have absolutely no idea how the gambling operator has calculated the actual odds of these four things happening.
They know the public doesn't, and that didn't exist in traditional sports betting. Traditional sports betting, if you were picking a 14 parlay, the odds against hitting it are 16 to one, two to the fourth power, and they were paying you depending on which house you were in 1211 to one 12, you kind of knew there's no way to know with this new same game parlay of this micro betting, and this is the stuff that's crushing people. So the Safe Bet Act is designed to take this entirely new industry and create minimum standards. This is not the federal government taking over. It's the federal government saying these are the minimum safety standards and then inviting partnership with the states, you can do more if you want, but here's the minimum we expect. It's really a great novel approach to protect states’ rights, and the federal government also protects consumers.
STEVE RUDDOCK: And it's super interesting what you say about the percentage of problem gamblers or the percentage of at-risk gamblers that we see a lot, and we sort of think of those as static categories, but I would caution anyone that if the number is 2%, nobody really knows what the number is. I'll just say it's 2% because that's a number that gets bandied about a lot. If the number is 2%, the actual number of people moving in and out of that category within a given year is probably 8%. People move in and out of that category. People go into treatment, and they get help. Some people just stop betting altogether on their own. Other people move in, move out. They're only a problem gambler for a couple of months. But like you were saying, the amount of harm you can do, even just in a day, in that category, is pretty overwhelming.
And Mason Malmuth, who owned Two Plus Two Poker, used to say this. He used to throw out the statistic a lot, which is that Mason was a statistician, so you're pretty good with statistics, was how many people in the poker room at any given moment are winning players? And most people would say, well, it's less than 5% because that's the number of winning players long-term. And Mason, I believe he said the number was 40% at least, because at any moment, people are winning. That's how these games work. So, to just say that this only affects 1% of people or 2% of people is a bit of a sleight of hand in my opinion, because people are moving in and out of those categories. So often.
HARRY LEVANT: It is also part of the ethical failure of the RG model. Very quickly, I need as a therapist to push back on the term problem gambler. It's nails on a chalkboard. To me, the problem is the addictive nature of the product. There are people who are experiencing problems, but they're not problem people. So, as a therapist, I understand the use of the word, but I think it's important, particularly in my role as a therapist, to state that there are so many issues with these untested statistics that the industry likes to throw around. We hear it all the time. You watch Bill Miller on the same 60 minutes story that I was on, Bill Miller proclaiming, it's less than 1% of people. The first thing is that we know this statistic is completely wrong. Why do we know it's wrong? We know it's wrong because we don't screen. The only people who get counted are the ones who crawl in for help.
They're the only folks who get counted. The second reason we know it's wrong is that it completely fails to define the actual issue. It's not how many people we wait for to meet the diagnostic criteria of addiction. It's how many people are suffering harm on a continuum, as you're describing. Other countries have looked at this. Australia, the United Kingdom, Finland, and Spain have looked at national public health surveys and have determined that 14%–16% of the general population, on an annual basis, suffers harm related to gambling. If those numbers hold in America, and remember, we're the land of super Costco, everything is bigger here, but if those numbers hold in America, that's upward of 65–70 million people suffering harm. So, for each person who struggles with gambling, peer-reviewed research tells us there are 8–10 people in their orbit who also suffer harm. So, this myopic focus the industry puts out on, well, it's only 1% of people who are ever diagnosed with a gambling disorder.
The numbers are wrong. We don't look, and the definition is wrong. Public health looks at the totality of the problem because if you are suffering from a gambling problem, so is your partner, so are your children, so are your coworkers. This is what the narrative has to be about, and that's where the Safe Bet Act comes in. The Safe Bet Act goes up to the top. It says, you know what? Here are some simple, straightforward, common-sense guardrails that, if we put them in place, sports gambling continues to exist, but many fewer people will suffer gambling-related harm, and that's what we do with every other addictive product, with every other addictive product. The government regulates the advertising, the distribution, the promotion, and the consumption. Here, the exact opposite is happening. The government at the state level is essentially letting everything happen, and it's happening in ways in the last seven years that nobody could have seen coming. That's why the Safe Bet Act is needed, and it's needed. Now.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Correct me if I'm wrong here, but didn't Representative Tonko also introduce a bill that would mandate insurance companies to pay for gambling addiction treatment? I believe that's something that it doesn't do right now.
HARRY LEVANT: Not a bill. He has issued a letter from the prior administration, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and this is an issue I would love to talk about because to me, once, not a mistake, the bed Act, because it just doesn't fit this particular bill. I submit that this is an issue that normally I don't like the word stakeholders. I'll use it for now because it's sort of trendy and popular. This is one where all stakeholders should be able to come together when the Affordable Care Act, what's more commonly known as Obamacare, was enacted in 2011. Then the regulations were written, and the regulations went into place in February of 2013. The regulations for the Affordable Care Act include 10 essential elements of health care, things that all insurance companies must cover if it's a policy that is in any way covered by the Affordable Care Act. Among those 10 are full coverage for all substance use disorders and addictions.
Those regulations became official in February of 2013. In February of 2013, gambling disorder was still considered an impulse control disorder. There's something wrong with Steve, Harry, and Mary. They can't control themselves. Three months later, in May of 2013, science finally catches up with itself and says, you know what? We had this one wrong. Gambling disorder is a full-fledged addiction just like heroin, tobacco, and alcohol. Well, now that we know, and there's no debate around the world, none that gambling is an addictive product and gambling disorder is a full-fledged addiction, gambling disorder should be treated the exact same way drug and alcohol addiction are. This would open up a wide range of services, and we would eliminate this system where, from state to state, if you call a hotline, you don't know what level of treatment you're getting. The reimbursements are very low.
The levels of care are very low. We could create a national standard for the treatment of gambling addiction, just like we have for drug and alcohol, and then it would free up so much of this money that is being thrown around at flawed systems to go into independent research. What are the empirically sound ways to regulate the product to prevent harm? We could all work together on that. So, going back to where we started, if you're right that there are people at high levels in this industry who would like to effectuate change, let's have a discussion together. I'll help walk through how this can be done. I think everybody benefits from that model.
STEVE RUDDOCK: And just to kind of put a bow on that, I think it speaks to the nascency of gambling addiction spoken about in this terminology where right now, if you are in the military and you have a gambling addiction and you actually go and get help from it, you're going to be basically dishonorably discharged. You lose any pension you have, you lose everything. So what do they do? They hide it. It makes matters worse. And I think the fact that on certain military bases around the world, there are slot machines doesn't really help that problem very much. I think when you look at this in totality, you start to see the need for better guardrails and federal guardrails that cover everything, because there are just so many different pathways that everything goes sideways with gambling.
HARRY LEVANT: We both know Dave Yager. He's a great guy and out there talking about how we need to protect our men and women, not only in uniform today but people who have so bravely served the country. You're absolutely right. They can't go and say, I'm struggling with a gambling problem. They can be discharged or dishonorably discharged for that. I see the military, particularly with Senator Blumenthal's involvement and Senator Blumenthal's track record of being such a champion for the rights of our men and women in uniform and our veterans, that the military might be the place where we start this in motion because if we could get the military to recognize the science, it's another step closer to the federal government recognizing the science. But let's be clear, one of the biggest obstacles is the gambling industry, and those letters, RG sends a message, and I see this on the micro level with patients as they enter my practice, and I see this on a macro level with issues we're discussing right now.
There is a message that suggests, if you're just as responsible as all your friends, everything will be fine. We see some of the most famous NFL players have a game plan. It's putting the total onus, Peyton Manning goes on TV, and has a game plan. No one talks about the fact that they're now delivering a product where you can bet on every snap of the football, and it never stops. I talked about this yesterday. I literally held up a shuttlecock from badminton, where they're now taking action on badminton matches around the world. These products, Steve, are not built for recreational purposes. They are built to keep people in action all the time. RG comes in, puts the blame on the individual. So in my practice on the micro level, one of the early things we do is psychoeducation around this. Understand this is not you being a bad person or being an irresponsible person.
This is a full-fledged addiction, and now we have to go to work on it. If we could get the industry to recognize that the RG model, the RG nomenclature is itself part of the problem, that moves us closer to getting the federal government saying, you know what, just like drugs and alcohol, this is an addiction and we need to treat it as such. But sadly, again, going back to where we started, while there are a lot of good people, we both know many, if not most, of them, as an industry moving away from responsible gaming seems to be the third rail for them. It's a threat to the current business model. Yeah.
STEVE RUDDOCK: It's interesting. I was actually talking with my wife about something similar yesterday. She went to an empowerment type luncheon thing and she was saying the person saying all of these interesting things, and what I was curious about, the question I asked her was, well, this person said they were unhappy in the past, but did they explain why? And that's when my wife was like, Oh yeah, the marriage broke up. Her husband was cheating on her or whatever. And I'm like, well, that's the reason I go. You can't just tell somebody who doesn't know why they're unhappy to just say this affirmation in the morning, because then if it doesn't work for you, like, well, what's wrong with me? Why isn't this working for me? They said this would work. And I kind of get the same vibe from a lot of the RG messaging, which is, what do you mean you didn't bet responsibly? We told you to. So what's the matter with you and the person? I've never sworn on this podcast. Rarely. So this'll kind of be for effect here, but they're like, oh, well, how did I fuck up? Well, what did I do that's wrong? And then you start questioning yourself and not so much the external factors that may have led you to that space.
HARRY LEVANT: You just hit the nail on the head. Every patient who comes to me struggles with that. It's part of what we address early on. It's one of the reasons that I insist on my patients or I encourage my patients to take advantage of the group treatment approach because inside that group, this is so well understood, but it extends beyond there. Family members don't understand this. Community members don't understand this, and the RG messaging is a big piece of the reason that it's so misunderstood. It's also coming back to the Safe Bet Act for a minute. It's also why one of the fundamental tenets of the Safe Bed Act is affordability checks, because appropriate affordability checks will prevent harm before it occurs. RG is again, after the harm has occurred, now we'll go treat it. If we had meaningful as we will when the Safe Bet Act passes meaningful affordability checks, which by the way, is not the government putting its hands in the pockets of the public, it's quite the opposite.
It's the government saying to an industry that has a license to market a known addictive product here, you're going to switch the responsibility. We're going to switch the onus on the gambling industry before you take more than a thousand dollars in bets a day from an individual or $10,000 in bets in a month, you have to run an appropriate affordability check to make sure that person can afford it. It'll give you an example. I'm treating a number of college students right now. They don't have jobs, or if they do, they're small part-time jobs, and they're coming to me tens of thousands of dollars in debt. That same college student goes into a car dealership. We have safety mechanisms in place so they can't buy a car that they're unable to afford. With gambling, DraftKings, FanDuel, and MGM, all of them will gladly not only take their money but will also give them rewards the more they gamble. It just absolutely makes no sense. Affordability checks to engage a customer. We're not putting our hand in your pocket, Steve, we're saying to the gambling operators, hey, you have a responsibility here before you take this action to make sure the customer has the financial wherewithal to afford this.
STEVE RUDDOCK: I mean, you even see that. I've mentioned this in my newsletter before, but you see this even with credit cards, which people consider a bit predatory, so that they won't even give a college student an unsecured credit card. You have to prove to them that there's, I mean, down the road, things get a little more gray, we'll say, with credit cards and loans and things of that sort, but initially, you have to prove your credit track record. It's before they'll extend a certain amount of credit to you.
HARRY LEVANT: And if you want more credit line, they're going to check to prove it. And these are the things we do, and credit cards aren't an addictive product, and this gets us closer to what I think is at the heart of this conversation and something I spoke openly about in my remarks yesterday with Safe Bet Act, which is Steve, you and I are really talking about a whole new product that didn't exist four years ago. This is from my vantage point, a brand new product that is inherently dangerous and effectively designed because the business model of online sports betting where the leagues, the teams, the owners, the players across the board, every sport we can think of are selling their statistics to the gambling industry for tens of billions of dollars. We don't even know how much in the aggregate the industry is paying for all these statistics, but having spent all of this money, the industry's not selling any product in the marketplace, to go back to an old law school term. There are no widgets being sold at market. The only product the gambling industry offers is online gambling.
A game between the Yankees and the Red Sox is going to take place whether people bet on it or not; people are going to bet, but that game is nothing new. All that's happening is they're taking these statistics, the billions of dollars they spend on them, and the only way to get the money back is to get people to engage in more and more gambling faster and faster with higher hold products, products that are more dangerous to the public and more profitable for the industry. I'm not saying whether this is good or bad. I'm simply stating that's the business model, and I challenge anyone to tell me that it isn't. That's the new model, and everybody wants a piece of the pie: the gambling operators, the leagues, the teams, the players themselves, broadcast media, social media, all the way down to influencers. Everybody wants a piece of this pie. Well, the more slices you cut in the pie, you have to make the pie bigger, and the way you make the pie bigger is you get people to lose more money. Again, I'm not saying whether it's good or bad. I'm simply telling you that's the new model, and that model is inherently dangerous. And then when you add in, well, okay, just be responsible with this new model, we are seeing the beginnings of a public health crisis, the full scope of which we're just starting to recognize.
STEVE RUDDOCK: So I really want to dive into the different policies in the Safe Bet Act. Well, one of the things that I talk about a lot is that we hear from the industry that friction upfront causes people to use offshore sites, and sends them. There are all kinds of problems with friction, and my thinking on it is that there should be some friction involved in this. It shouldn't be seamless; it shouldn't be simple to do these things. So, from the previous Safe Bet Act and from the new additions this time around, it seems like you're putting in some friction to get, whether that's in marketing to the consumer, or whether that's in the consumer's ability to get themselves into trouble early on in their journey. There seems to be friction.
I mean, what you were saying about the affordability checks is a great example of that, right? That there's a little bit, if you want to bet a lot, there's a little bit of friction if anybody who's ever bought a house knows that when you buy a house, there's a lot of friction involved in that. It's not just, oh yeah, you want to buy a house? Yeah, okay, here's the loan. Okay, move in. Here's the keys. There's a lot of friction. I said years ago when we bought a house, I said, I think they do this just so they prove that you really are into buying the house and you're going to go through with it because it's the amount of nonsense that you have to go through is a lot, and honestly, maybe we need a little bit more friction.
HARRY LEVANT: I'm in the process of relocating to Boston. You want friction? Try and get an apartment in Boston. Okay? I prefer the word guardrails, but it's the same principle. There needs to be guardrails, friction, and safety mechanisms. But what we're really talking about here, and this is the fundamental shift from RG, whether we call it guardrails or friction, we are shifting the onus away from the individual, where the industry has placed it for decades, and we are moving that onus onto the gambling companies and their sports partners. You are going to be regulated. We are going to regulate the advertising, distribution, and promotion of this product to keep the public safe. I am not a prohibitionist. I have testified under oath in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I'm in favor of legalized sports gambling, properly regulated. So what you describe as friction, I describe as a common-sense approach to here's an addictive product.
How are we going to keep it as safe as possible for the end user? The way you do that is not by blaming the end user, but you put in the guardrails, you put in the friction, you put in affordability checks, you put in deposit limits, you ban the use of credit cards. Why should people be able to borrow money at 30% to gamble with? It just simply makes no sense from the start, and something is not in the Safe Bet Act, but I will tell you that my colleagues at PHAI and I are going to begin working on it right away. A 9-year-old can download a gambling app to their phone can open up that app, and get into the sports book. It makes no sense. I mean, it literally makes no sense. These need to be age 21 restricted to download ‘em. We haven't even begun to talk about the advertising. The whole system is built around keeping people in constant action. Again, I'm not saying whether it's good or bad. I do have a doctorate in public policy, and I'm prepared to engage in a policy discussion with anyone who wants to engage with me. We can talk about whether it's good or bad, but it's the model. This is what online gambling is in 2025.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah. Keith Whyte actually said this to me a while back, which was that he was doing a talk at a high school, and he said, how many people have a gambling app on their phone? And he said, a lot of hands went up, and me, I mean, I grew up in Massachusetts, so I'm not unfamiliar with illegal gambling by any stretch of the imagination, and immediately I'm like, yeah, because they can look at the odds and then bet with their friends.
HARRY LEVANT: That's exactly what's happening. That's exactly what's happening.
STEVE RUDDOCK: You're giving them the data. Not that you can't, I mean the lines were in the newspaper back in the day, but again, there's a certain amount of friction involved in all of this. So now there's a lot more betting opportunities with, like you said, the prop bets in the same game, parlays, all this stuff that now everybody can see the data for those, and that's where the gambling begins. My gambling began in middle school, where we used to play poker after school for quarters because I saw my parents do that. They used to play at the kitchen table. I saw my grandmother do that. They used to play for, sorry. They always used nickels and occasionally quarters. They didn't use dimes because they had trouble picking them up off the table. That was the reason for that.
HARRY LEVANT: There's something.
STEVE RUDDOCK: I'm sorry. You see all of that, and kids are going to experiment with it. But the question, I think, that you're raising with what the Safe Bet Act is trying to accomplish is how much do we just turn a blind eye to what is happening, and how much oversight do we provide? There are certain things, like you've got to let your kids learn to drive, right? But you don't give them the keys to the car and go, well, just come back in three hours when they first go.
HARRY LEVANT: I've told this story a few times. I was involved in the care of a 21-year-old patient who lost $71,000 to one of the big operators. The big commercialized U.S. operator lost $71,000 in the first three months after their 21st birthday. This same person worked 20 hours a week at a job that paid $8 and 50 cents an hour. That's 200 bucks a week they were making. It's inconceivable to me that an industry should be permitted to take that kind of action without there being safety requirements placed on the look. The industry is the one that has the license. Every single bet in every online casino is in favor of the house, as it should be. They're there to make money, but with a license comes a privilege, and with a license comes a duty. We've addressed this with alcohol states.
You go out and rear-end somebody. The person you rear-ended has a cause of action against that bar. There's not yet a similar thing with gambling. Public health advocates are going to work for these kinds of safeguards because policy in the U.S. public policy in the United States is going to move through three different channels here. It's going to move through the legislative and political process. You saw some of that yesterday. It's going to continue at the federal and state levels. It's going to move through the research process. Right now, the industry is still funding way too much of the research. There will be independent research in the United States. I hope to publish the research that I did as part of my doctorate. You'll see independent research, and then the third part of this is going to be litigation. There will be litigation, and that litigation piece will move policy because it will give the beauty of the court system. It gives the public a voice in what the standard should be. Right now, that doesn't exist, but it's coming.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah. I think that's the element that will make companies come on board with certain policies, right? Once you start getting sued for amounts, so right now they get fined and those fines are kind of a slap on the wrist, but when you start getting class action lawsuits like tobacco and things like that, generally their attitude toward how they approach it changes.
HARRY LEVANT: My dad was a phenomenal, phenomenal trial lawyer, and he had a little plaque on his desk, and you said that we weren't going to curse in this. I'll push the envelope a little bit and tell you what the plaque on my dad's desk said. It said, when you got ‘em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. I once heard a reporter ask my father, does that have any meaning other than he said, no. It means exactly what it says. From a more family-friendly perspective, the public deserves a voice in what the appropriate standards are. That doesn't exist in the RG model. It's a fundamental principle of a public health approach.
STEVE RUDDOCK: So we talked a bit about disclosing the true odds. I would be really interested to talk about the VIP and the tier programs restrictions that are in the new version of the Safe Product Act. This is something I've been harping about a little bit, which is, do I think that VIP programs have to go completely? No, but I think the model, as it stands now, is, to use your term, heavily flawed in that it incentivizes the wrong behaviors.
HARRY LEVANT: That's really all it does. It rewards. The more you gamble, the more you get, the more you gamble, the healthier you get. Competition among operators is part of the American way. It's part of capitalism, and I can respect the fact that there's a need for operators to spend appropriate amounts of money for customer retention. I get that because it's very easy to go from platform to platform to platform, but any model that is based on an incentive to continue to gamble. The easiest way to understand this one is a bar. There's not a bar whose license would survive if it said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to hire somebody to stand behind the bar. They're going to watch our drinkers and they're going to identify the ones with the propensity to drink the most and the ability to drink the most, and we're going to reward them with gifts and things.
As long as they keep coming in here and drinking more, I am very confident that the State government would shut that bar down on the spot, with gambling. They're called hosts and they receive compensation for the more of their clients’ wagers. It just fundamentally fought, and it's particularly fought in this new era, this new world of online gambling. This isn't the Sands flying somebody out to Las Vegas to see Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, right? Because if they don't get up to Las Vegas, they can't gamble. My patients are gambling in the shower. You heard, you heard Andrew Douglas talk yesterday at the press conference, describing that he was gambling everywhere, and his host was rewarding the behavior.
I struggle. I agree with you that there may be a role, but not until we blow up what exists because the system right now can't be fixed. The system right now is just incentivizing people to gamble. That's got to go away. Then you want to have some conversations about how the gambling industry should be able to market itself to its customers. I'll have that conversation, but I'm not going to meet in the middle when the existing model is so damaged and so damaging. Obviously, I treat a lot of people. I have seen the emails, I've seen the exchanges. I've seen the letters for the programs where they're trying to bring people back who stopped gambling for a couple of months. It's insidious. And also in the state bad act, actually, there's a fourth that wasn't in the first. I forgot to mention this. It specifically bans reload bonuses. Your account is empty here. We'll give you 50% more. It is unconscionable, and I challenge any gambling executive, anyone who's going, many are going to watch this broadcast at Steve Reddick's invitation. Join me on a Steve Ruddick podcast. Let's debate VIP programs. Let's debate why they are so damaging. I don't think they're willing to do that, not with the current model.
STEVE RUDDOCK: To take your analogy a step further. In some respects, you also have somebody behind the bar, not just watching how much somebody drinks, but what they drink. Well, this person drinks a very high markup item. This person is drinking the thing where we're making a nickel on it, and when we have to give them the cup, we're actually losing money, so don't give them anything extra. And it is almost to the point where it's like not only are we going to incentivize them with a T-shirt or a hat or whatever you want to say for the alcohol reference, but we're also going to incentivize them by, well, if your first three drinks are the regular price, but after that they go down to half price. Right? There's a certain level of we are just trying to increase your play or increase your drinking, however we can, because we know you drink something that is high markup.
HARRY LEVANT: And with drinking, there's a natural defense mechanism. There's a limit to how much wine you can drink at night. You're going to fall asleep on the bar. There is no limit to gambling. There are no visible manifestations. The only people who really know are the gambler and the host and the host is in the position of control and the person who is struggling when gambling, not a single one of my patients, not a one of them ever woke up, not one day Steve, and said this to themselves. At the start of the day, I know what I'm going to do today. I'm going to screw over my spouse and my kids. I'm going to hurt my family. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do today. That happens. That's what addiction looks like, and for therapists who are listening to this broadcast, I am intentionally using the word addiction.
I know I'm supposed to use the softer language for gambling disorder. We treat people who struggle with a gambling disorder. Here's the problem. There's a stigma around gambling addiction, and if I can come on here and you give me the privilege to tell my story, and I can use the word addiction openly with you, I can lessen or help lessen that stigma because you see a disorder is when your toaster stops browning, the toaster the way you want it to. A toaster's got a disorder; you need a toaster. Addiction is, this is my one time to use the F word. Addiction is fucking ugly, and it takes people to a dark, horrific place, and it destroys all the relationships closest to them. So we're not talking about fun and games here, and this product, the industry says, is designed for fun and recreational purposes. What's recreational about betting on badminton?
I'll make a prediction for you. I don't make bets anymore. I'll make a prediction in the history of humankind: no human being has ever uttered this sentence, have an idea for some fun. Let me spend some money betting on badminton. It's never been said. The product exists to keep people in action. VIP programs, tier programs, regal, and bonuses are designed to keep people in action. That model is flawed. It requires a public health response. The Safe Bet Act is part of the political response. There will be research, and there will also be litigation. These are the things that are going to push the public health narrative here in the United States, and I hope around the world as well.
STEVE RUDDOCK: I mean, I used to play as a professional poker player for many years, and I have a hard time because there were points where I would probably be looking back using hindsight, I could say, no, I experienced harm at that point. I was not in a good place while I was gambling. I regret these things, and I don't think there's anybody who gambles who can just say, No, I've never had a negative experience gambling. Anytime you lose, there's some level of regret. I could have done something else with those four hours. There's a level of regret to it. I think your point about the person waking up and never saying that, and I also think that what people need to understand is that alcoholics know they have a problem with alcohol, right? It's just the ability to stop the habit, stop doing what they're doing. Is it the same in your mind as people who are experiencing problems with gambling? They know they wake up in the morning, and they know.
HARRY LEVANT: It varies, and I'll give you a few, and I'll include my own story in this. I am always happy to share any part of my story. As a therapist, it's important for me to measure and bracket because it's the journey my clients and patients are on, not my journey that matters but every one of us has had a moment where we stand in front of a mirror. Don't do it again. Stop it. Today's the last day. That's your last bet. The best way that I can explain addiction to someone who fortunately hasn't suffered in its grips, because I wouldn't want my worst enemy to suffer in its grips. Explain it this way. The general public has an understanding that addiction of any type is some form of pain relief. If you are escaping from something that you can't or think you're not able to deal with at a particular moment, there's an escapism, a pain relief, to addiction.
What the general public doesn't understand is that, simultaneously with the pain relief, addiction delivers the kind of euphoria, Steve, that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. It is the highest of highs you can experience. It is an unsustainable high, but the more you have it, the more you need it. The more you need it, the more you want it. And round and round it goes. There are three things that I tell every patient at the start of treatment, and I now incorporate this in all of my public talks, and I'll share it with you and our audience. Thing number one, we've already covered gambling. Addiction is a full-fledged addiction, just like heroin, opioids, tobacco, alcohol, and cocaine. Full stop. It's not about Johnny and Sally not being responsible. People are making bad decisions or lacking judgment. Those things happen, too, but they are not driving the trade.
This is a full-fledged addiction thing. Number two, and this is the one that most people go's Terry talking about gambling addiction has nothing to do with money. Full stop, nothing to do with money. Yeah, what's involved in the financial that happens, but again, it's not driving the train. Gambling addiction has to do with the way this product makes people feel. And here's what's so sinister about it. What's so sinister about it is that winning for the person who's struggling is worse than losing. When you're winning, you might have to stop, but when you're losing, you can chase more and more and more action, and it's in the palm of your hand at all times. And it is that chase of action where these worlds collide, because the gambling industry business model is designed to deliver nonstop action for the person who is struggling. The chase of action is what destroys them.
And the third piece is that, in the absence of state-of-the-art treatment, gambling and addiction never get better. It gets progressively worse. So, for anyone who's listening to this who is struggling, pick up the phone, reach out for help, those three courageous words, I need help, because you cannot outthink this. So, going back to the start of your question, do people know addiction? You can know that everything you are doing is harmful to yourself, harming those closest to you, causing irreparable pain and damage, yet be powerless to do anything about it. It's not the conscious awareness. Levels of gambling-related harm can be conscious awareness, but when you reach that threshold of struggling with gambling addiction, there's no way to think your way out of it. So it's a straightforward question, and it required a little bit more of a complicated answer, and I apologize for that.
STEVE RUDDOCK: No, no, that's a good answer. Excuse me. It reminds me of something I've heard in martial arts, which is that when you're learning something, there are four stages to it, which are the first one is unconscious incompetence. You don't know that. You don't know how to do it, right? And then there's conscious incompetence, which is, I know I don't know how to do it yet. And then there's conscious competence, which is, I understand, I know how to do it, but I have to think about it to know it. And then I think what you're saying is then you get to a point of unconscious competence where you can do it without thinking about it. And it sounds like that's kind of how you're explaining addiction.
HARRY LEVANT: And then you bring in the RG narrative, which, along the way, is constantly telling people, you can do this responsibly as a therapist. I don't believe in a harm reduction model. Many therapists do, and I salute them for their efforts in that area. Harm reduction. Let's see if we can get you to do this a little bit less. I don't subscribe to a harm reduction approach with my patients because I've never seen it work over any extended period of time with gambling. I have seen it result in cataclysmic additional problems. And I have patients who come to me and they want me to help them gamble less. I declined to take those folks as patients, and I suggested to them that there are other therapists out there who will work with you on this model, or if you want to continue gambling, you have every right to do that.
I'm not opposed to gambling, and I will be here if and when you're ready for a different level of help. And I caution them that if you meet the diagnostic criteria for gambling addiction, and we do the testing, we have the discussions, it's unlikely in my judgment that your attempt to just cut back is going to work, particularly in this era where between the advertising and the artificial intelligence (AI) and the phone tablet, it's everywhere. So there are therapists who will work from a harm reduction model. I just don't think it's efficacious, and I think it's potentially dangerous. You can see the similarities between that and an RG model that is just constantly telling people, just be responsible.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah. I have a feeling that my thing is, I like to put it into terms. So a lot of people don't understand addiction, gambling addiction specifically. I would say that for a lot of people, if you look at aging fighters and how they say, well, why are you still fighting? People ask them, and they're saying, you don't understand. It's what I know. It's how it makes me feel. And that seems to be the same type of mindset. It's just that you feel good.
HARRY LEVANT: Beyond good. One of the tenets of how I approach treatment with my patients is both an individual and a group approach. I'm happy to share this with anyone who wants to discuss it. Patients will look at me. I use the words patient and client interchangeably. Patients will look at me and say, well, when are my gambling urges going to go away? They're not. If we're gambling addicts, we're going to want to gamble. Now, what's the ultimate key to treatment? Listen, early on, it's just stopped the hemorrhaging. But long-term recovery is about making your recovery more authentic, more meaningful, and more purposeful to you than any bet could ever be. But if you think I'm going to be able to somehow magically make a gambling addict, who just wants to never have an urge again.
I used to love the Jersey Shore boardwalk, the water gun games with the water gun in the clown's mouth, the balloon, of course, I wouldn't want to play one. I would want to play all 20. I will never again play a water gun game, not because it's going to send me back to a crap table. It's not. There are two reasons I won't play a water gun game. One is out of respect for people who are out there who are still struggling and haven't been able to say, I need help just out of respect for people who are struggling. I'm not going to engage in something that meets the definition of gambling. But the other is, I protect my recovery every day. And the minute I pick up that water gun, if there is some 9-year-old kid next to me whose balloon is going faster, I want to beat that 9-year-old kid. That's the brain of an addict. So I'm not going to feed that in any way at all because nothing's more important to me. My recovery, there's a difference between being sober from gambling and being in a long-term recovery. And what you want to get patients to is the place where not making a bet is more authentic, more meaningful, and more purposeful than any line. That's a long journey for folks. But that's the nirvana of recovery.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, that's super interesting because I've likened it to the claw machine, where I'm like, it's better that you actually let your kid use that. So they see how hard it is to beat one of those things. And anytime. So we found one in, we were up on vacation in New Hampshire, and one of the claw machines, every stuffed animal, and it had a tag on it that was bigger than the claw. So they were really easy to pick up. And I explained to them as we were doing this and taking five stuffed animals out of the machine, I'm like, this one is rigged.
It's rigged for us. And I go, when we see ‘em at the grocery store, and they use them, and you never win. I'm like, this one is rigged for them.
HARRY LEVANT: It's funny. I told you that story. I used water guns. I alternate the story between water guns and the claw machine, because a question I get a lot is, do you miss it? And the answer is very easy, miss it. How could I miss something that resulted in my doing so much harm to so many people who once cared about me and trusted me? But I do miss the call game at the front of the supermarket, but I haven't played a call game in 11 years. I played them. You could put 50 cents in or maybe a dollar. It didn't matter. I would put $20 in. I'm an addict.
You bring up your kids. Yeah, share that joyful experience with them. I had a reporter ask me recently, though. So anyway, I'd given up the claw game for the same reasons. I had a reporter ask me recently to tell them a story of being with their three grandkids, all of whom were under 21 and wanting to make a hundred-dollar bet on a football game. It seemed like a sure thing. And this person said to their grandkids, look, if we win, we'll each get 25. And I said to the reporter, That's great, but what would've happened if you lost the bet? Well, I would've paid it. Okay. So you've introduced gambling to your teenage grandchildren as a, you can win, but you can't lose proposition, the normalization of sports gambling. Steve, you and I could do an entire podcast on just the normalization of this product and how that's part of the overall problem here. That would be its own interesting conversation.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, my family reunion, there was always a raffle, and kids always won. They always won something. And we went to a charity room full of one-time, and they didn't win, and they couldn't figure out what was going on. But it offered the opportunity to explain to them, you have to be aware of the whole situation. When we're at the family reunion, there are seven little kids there, so you are putting tickets into a bag nobody else is putting tickets into. Right. And how many people were at this charity auction? And they're like, oh, there were a lot of people there. And then you start talking to them, and they start to understand it a little. But I mean, my friend Jamie Salzberg says this a lot. You do. They're going to experiment with it. It's almost impossible. Like you said, claw machines, cloud, all that stuff is gambling to me. It's anything where it's chance, it's gambling.
HARRY LEVANT: Jamie's exactly right. I agree with him completely. Excuse me. Remind me never to do a podcast when I'm coming down with a cold again. Jamie's exactly right. And it reminds me of impersonating Nancy Reagan. I have no doubt that Mrs. Reagan meant well with just saying no to drugs. Just say no to drugs was an abysmal failure. Kids are going to experiment with online gambling. Many are going to grow to enjoy it recreationally. Many others are going to get caught in its grip. Therefore, rather than waiting until the harm has occurred, and then okay, we'll have to treat the people who got hurt. Let's put these guardrails in. Let's create a safe environment for people to do this. That's the Safe Bet Act.
STEVE RUDDOCK: So there's one aspect of this that I think everyone in the space agrees with, which is cracking down on offshore books. So I think you have a lot of people on board with that, on all sides of this. Another thing that I would say was interesting to me was during the congressional hearing, when they asked each of the witnesses, would they support the Safe Bet Act? And there wasn't one who said, not at all. Everybody who said there are parts of it, I agree with. So there are some definite areas of overlap throughout the industry. I'm curious to know what you see as the additional benefits of cracking down on offshore books that everyone should agree with and why there's really no reason not to. There's no argument against it.
HARRY LEVANT: Offshore books. I'm proud of myself because I will take credit for writing most of the language in that section. And I really wrote it as an invitation to everyone, states, federal government, industry, and public health advocates, let's work together. And here's a model with the cease and desist letters that the industry is advocating for. So we're picking up the industry's model and we're going to take it further. There are a number of things in there that I think should immediately, immediately have universal support from all stakeholders. They're not going to, but they should. The first is college prop bets. Governor Baker, the NCAA has called for this. Some states have enacted it. It just doesn't make any sense to put this added pressure on 18- and 19-year-old kids competing in college athletics, that every motion they make in a game or event is the subject of betting.
It is the equivalent of the badminton I was discussing earlier. I mean, really, do we need this much betting on the backs of 18-, 19-, and 20-year-old kids? So that's an easy one right there. And again, I am going to push for everything in this act, but I'm going to give you a direct answer to the question as you phrased it. Things that I think everyone can join in credit card deposits, they just make no sense at all to let people borrow money at 30% to gamble with affordability. Checks are going to get the most pushback from the industry. They're also the thing that will save and prevent the most harm. Affordability checks, as much as anything in that act, are designed to prevent harm before it occurs.
Another one that I think makes a ton of sense is what I call the whistle-to-whistle ban. Let gambling companies take action before a game starts. But the way, and I submit to you, Steve, most regulators don't know what you and I are about to talk about the way with every shot, every pitch, every swing, the odds are constantly changing, is designed for people to chase action. That's all it's in there for. And it is a purely AI-driven product. I think creating a reasonable framework around eliminating, reducing in-game betting makes sense because it is a public health model. And the next one that I think the industry will initially push back on, but we will be open to some discussion, reasonable advertising restrictions. I mean, you cannot sit down and watch a baseball game at two o'clock in the afternoon without being inundated with gambling talk, gambling ads.
It's not necessary. People know that DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM exist. The public's not surprised they're out there. So I kind of mixed a few in there. I think the industry will push back hard on affordability checks, but I think it's going to get significant political support when people understand it as regulators and politicians understand it. I think the ban on micro betting and in-game betting will get huge industry pushback. But as regulators and politicians understand it, I've had the privilege of sitting down over the last couple of months with half a dozen national journalists and actually going to sports bars and demonstrating with them how micro betting works. And these are things that folks, these are products that the journalists didn't even understand until they saw them. One journalist said to me, we were watching the Ohio State/Notre Dame college football championship, and this journalist said to me, wow, you really can't get hooked on this really quickly.
So I think that there'll be pushback, but I think that there'll be some universal recognition that micro bedding is out of control. And I mentioned the advertising restrictions. I would like to think that deposit limits will meet with some industry approval because it would really take an industry-wide effort to do them right, because you don't want people jumping from FanDuel to DraftKings to MGM. So I would like the industry to recognize that if people are making rapid deposits after rapid deposits, it's a telltale sign, and we need to bring this down. And then the one that I know we can get universal approval on, even more than the offshore, is what Senator Blumenthal wants most, which is a national self-exclusion list. Now, as a therapist, I have a love-hate relationship with self-exclusion, but if we're going to have it, it has to be national. It cannot be, my patients can drive across the bridge to New Jersey from Philadelphia, and continue gambling in a Wawa parking lot, can't work. So again, straightforward question, a long answer I gave you. I think we'll meet with universal approval, and I've kind of looked at the ones where I expect some pushback.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, I mean, there are arguments. You can make an argument for anything. I always say this with statistics, you can make ‘em say pretty much whatever you want. And I think to your point, yeah, there will be some pushback on these things. And there's always research that says the opposite, and everybody comes armed with their own facts. But I think at the end of the day, your theory and what you're trying to accomplish is what I try to teach in martial arts, which is that the principle matters more than the technique. So it doesn't matter if you punch the person or kick them in the head, it kind of has the same result. So don't worry so much about technically what you're doing, worry about the principle behind what you're doing. And for you, that's getting to a point where there are appropriate guardrails in the industry.
HARRY LEVANT: Exactly right. The principle here is to switch the onus of putting the blame on the individual to creating appropriate guardrails in the industry. And when you pull back, there are a lot of different types of people now in the space as operators. Jason Robbins is a very different kind of person from a gambling executive who has been around Las Vegas for four decades. They're very different approaches. But across the board, the idea that we should protect the public by regulating the industry should make sense to everyone.
You would be, I've said this to you back channel, you would be an excellent moderator of some debates, which in the appropriate places I think makes some sense as well. Because in a debate format, there are a lot of things I expect the industry to start saying about the Safe Bet Act, to say about me and my colleagues at PHAI, the things they're going to initially say are just flat out wrong, so they can come out and call us prohibitionists. We're not. We're in favor of legalized gambling. We're not trying to stop sports betting, just public health advocates trying to make it safe. And I like to think that not only conversations like this but a learned debate with an appropriate moderator can draw out the importance of this and move us closer to a place of, ultimately, there's going to need to be some dialogue. But right now, until that dialogue is not taking place right now, right now, advocacy is more important than dialogue. Advocacy will lead to dialogue.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah, I agree with you. I don't think there's any debate in the industry whatsoever anymore. I think there are gaming conferences where you have a lot of like-minded people. Every now and then, you have a small, minor issue that people disagree with, whether it's sweepstakes or something else. But those are small potatoes compared to the largest scheme of things. And it's interesting that there isn't any type of debate format. All we get are fireside chats and panel discussions.
HARRY LEVANT: Yep. Bill Pascrell III and I did a debate on NPR, you probably saw, and there were days before the conference, it was in Barcelona this year, last year, and Bill said to me, I'm going to see you in Barcelona. I started to laugh. He says, why are you laughing? I said, no, I don't get very many invitations to those types of events. He said, well, we should do a debate at one of them. I said, call me. And he calls me. I'll be more than happy to show up and talk about these things. Each person who listens to this will form their own opinion of my approach. I hope people will recognize that. It's informed that I'm bringing things that can make a difference. I'm not pounding my fist on the table. Lord knows I'm not angry at anybody. I'm in the happiest place I've ever been in my life, just trying to do what I think I'm required to do. Because if not me, then who truly, when you think about my journey, if I don't do this, who's going to do it? And if I'm going to go treat people and I love treating, I'll never stop being a clinician. I love it. It's a privilege every day. But if I want to treat people, I have an obligation to try to prevent the problem in the first place. It seems to me I do.
I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going anywhere. And PHAI is not going anywhere. PHAI is still doing tobacco and has made a difference there. So I'll, how about we close with this to all of those folks who are saying, this is impossible. You can't get it done. Don't bet against PHAI. We know what we're doing.
STEVE RUDDOCK: Yeah. And we will leave it there.
HARRY LEVANT: Until next time, Steve.
