Dad calls for curb on gambling after son's death
A heartbroken dad from Merseyside is calling for tighter controls on gambling adverts after his son took his own life over shame of his addiction.
A heartbroken dad from Merseyside is calling for tighter controls on gambling adverts after his son took his own life over shame of his addiction.
27 year old Ryan Myers from Huyton took his own life in May 2014 days after losing hundreds of pounds on betting machines. On the day - he had blown £500 on a fixed-odds machine.
His dad John says he committed suicide because he felt he'd 'lost control' over his gambling. He's now launched a petition for tougher restrictions on betting advert
"It's the worst thing that can happen to anybody. It's the worst feeling you'll ever get, you feel; have you let him down, we could of helped him, but he couldn't feel he could talk to us about it. it just kills you."
"He'd lost his entire wages a few times, and he had spent a lot of money on the gambling sites. He was too proud to talk to anybody, he felt he'd let everybody down and thats why he did what he did"
John says Ryan was still getting emails from gambling companies after he died.
"I know there's Gamble Aware and other charities out there, but I dont think their advertised enough. The adverts are all about people winning, people having a good time, there's no downside to it. There's something the Government can do about this because it's false advertising. You're telling people they can get something when they really can't"
An Association of British Bookmakers spokesman said: “We deeply sympathise with Mr Myers and his family for their tragic loss. The industry takes responsible gambling very seriously and we have introduced new measures to help tackle problem gambling over and above regulatory requirements.
“This includes a mandatory code of practise for all betting shops, the banning of gaming machine advertising in shop windows and the introduction of a national self-exclusion scheme by April 2016.
“The ABB and our members have also introduced systems which allow targeted responsible gambling messages to be sent to account-based gaming machine players whose history indicates they may be on a trajectory of harm.”
To read John's petition you can click on the link here