At the end of school year you can hear children and teens shouting with joy. It's a time for relaxation, a time to catch up on sleep, no more teachers and no more books and for many children and teens, a time to head off to camp.

There are a wide variety of summer camps for children to enjoy. Sports camps, space camps, computer camps, art camps, horseback riding camps, etc. But some young entrepreneurs, trying to capitalize on the international poker craze, came up with a new, novel camp idea. Poker Camp for kids. Let's teach them the “correct ways to play Texas Hold'em.” Do we really need to be sending our children to camp to learn how to play poker?

These ingenious folk tried to run this camp in Vancouver, British Columbia, but were ultimately thwarted by the government of British Columbia. If this was not bad enough, the Montreal Gazette (Quebec’s only English daily newspaper) ran an editorial suggesting that sending children to poker camp, especially boys, is a good way of teaching them mathematics, probability theory, risk taking and how to best read individuals. What could they be thinking? What the editorialists failed to realize was that developmentally, young children

may not have cognitive maturity to understand limit setting, advanced probability theory, or how to read the behavioural signs of their peers.

Second, while there may be some learning of mathematics involved in poker, there is little transfer of learning. As such, while they may learn to be better poker players, their performance in class concerning addition, multiplication, division and fractions will not improve. Third, there is ample empirical evidence to suggest that having engaged early on in gambling and/or having won a lot of money (a big win is often dependent upon one's age) early on in life is predictive of later gambling problems.

The notion that a Kids Poker Tour can be advertised suggests that gambling has become a widely socially acceptable behaviour and form of entertainment throughout the world…even for kids. And, while it's true that only a relatively small percentage of individuals experience severe gambling problems, we would be best advised to teach our children these skills when they have the social and cognitive maturity to acquire them.

Heeding a growing body of research, many legislators throughout the world in their wisdom established age limits for engaging in this behaviour, similar to drinking alcohol. British Columbia's Solicitor General John Les should be congratulated for his efforts at changing the existing regulations and statutes to require a

permit to operate this type of enterprise. The budding entrepreneurs took a hint and decided to pull out of Vancouver before they even started, although they reportedly had large numbers of children and teens registered.

There is growing evidence that upwards of 80% of teens in many jurisdictions throughout the world have engaged in some form of gambling (for money) during the past year with another 30% doing so weekly. What starts off as harmless fun can escalate rather quickly and end up producing some very serious negative consequences.

While we all recognize that adults can gamble excessively and have problems, few people associate problem gambling with adolescents. As such, parents often condone this behaviour, sometimes subtly or overtly encouraging their gambling. Yet, like adults, there are a number of adolescents with some very serious gambling problems. (cont on page 4)