College students exhibit a continuum of gambling behavior, from none to experimenting with gambling, to regular gambling, to excessive gambling with concomitant adverse consequences. Many college students gamble. Most do not experience adverse consequences, but there are a small per- centage who become problem gamblers (Winters, Bengston, Dorr, and Stinchfield, 1998). Many youths begin gambling at an early age, even earlier than they begin other risky behaviors such as tobacco and alcohol use (Ladouceur, Dube, and Bujold, 1994a; Stinchfield, 2004). A longitudinal study that fol- lowed an adolescent sample into young adulthood found that rates of gam- bling and problem gambling remained fairly stable over time; however, there was a shift away from informal games to legalized games as youths came of legal age (Winters, Stinchfield, and Kim, 1995).
Some young men and women recently arrived at college have begun participating in legalized gambling, a new “rite of passage” for many young adults, while others will go through this rite for the first time in college. Still other students have been gambling for years informally through betting on games of personal skill, cards, and sporting events.
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