Unregulated gambling on cryptocurrency is heaping demand on NHS gambling clinics, the head of the health service has warned.
Amanda Pritchard called for regulatory action to stop young people getting “hooked” on new forms of betting, saying the NHS could not afford to keep “picking up the pieces” of societal problems.
Counsellors are treating increasing numbers of people who have attempted to get rich from trading in cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, as well as from those gambling on the market, or using the currency to place bets.
Ms Pritchard said that 15 specialist gambling clinics which have been created across the country were responding to a “real and growing social need” for treatment, describing the addiction as “a cruel disease which has the power to destroy people’s lives”.
But she told the Confed Expo conference of NHS managers that the health service could not become an “expensive safety net” for the problems created by society.
The health chief said: “As a society we need to ask, are we okay to just continue picking up the pieces while the methods employed to keep people hooked get ever more sophisticated.
“Ever more opportunities spring up for younger people to get addicted to gambling including – as I’ve heard from staff when I visited the national problem gambling clinic earlier this year – on unregulated cryptocurrency markets.”
She said the NHS, which was already “damaged, but not destroyed” by pressures post-Covid, could not afford to become an “expensive safety net”.
“That kind of service is what the NHS was born as, but it shouldn’t be our ambition now,” she told health service managers.
Last year the Treasury select committee called for trading in bitcoin and other speculative cryptocurrencies to be regulated as gambling to avoid consumers from being lulled into a false sense of security about the risks posed by the $1.2 trillion market.
It quoted a 2022 survey which found that around one in ten adults in the UK hold or have held cryptoassets, most commonly in the form of currency.
‘Fun investment’
The same report found that the most mentioned reason for holding cryptoassets was that they were a “fun investment” with anecdotal evidence of school children speculating on the markets.
Ms Pritchard said: “The addictive habit sees people investing their own money in something with no fixed value, with the NHS left to pick up the pieces. This growing problem could create further demand for the health service.
The health chief also warned that the NHS was dealing with a “rising tide” of patients suffering from illnesses fuelled by obesity.
Highlighting new figures, showing record numbers of patients have been identified as “pre-diabetic” – meaning they are at high risk of developing the condition, she said.
The figures from the national diabetes audit show more than half a million more people have been identified in just one year – a jump of almost a fifth.