New Delhi, Nov 22 (IANS) In view of the increasing addiction to online gambling among the youth, former Union Minister and senior BJP leader Vijay Goel has demanded that the government should immediately ban or regulate platforms indulging in such activities, a party leader said on Friday.

Goel has written a letter to Information and Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, highlighting the alarming issue of youth being drawn towards destruction through online gaming.

In the letter, he expressed concern that children and young people often unknowingly drift into online gambling while engaging in online gaming activities and demanded restrictions on celebrity advertisements that tend to attract the youth.

Goel wrote, “The dream of earning money with just a single click on a mobile phone is driving the youth into a frenzy. Many young people take loans and invest money in online games, hoping to win big.”

“However, when they lose, they often find themselves caught in a debt trap. In several instances, the stress of financial losses from these games has even led individuals to take the extreme step of ending their lives,” said the former Union Minister.

Goel stated that, in many cases, even the parents of the children remain unaware of their alleged addiction to gambling in the garb of gaming.

The BJP leader said that a big reason behind the addiction to online gaming/gambling is the misleading advertisements promoting various types of online gaming by our film actors and cricketers. Since the youth consider them their role model, they get trapped in the online game.

Goel stated that the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, believed that gambling addiction spreads like wildfire and emphasised the need for laws to curb it. ”Today, the addiction to online gaming and gambling has escalated to a similar, alarming level,” he wrote.

The BJP leader suggested to Vaishnaw that online games should be regulated or banned immediately.

By talking to cricketers and players appearing in advertisements of online gaming/gambling, they should be stopped from doing such promotion, he wrote.