Gambling: The Game where Everyone is a Loser: A Persuasive Speech

Introduction

I got to know this family of 8. They are just a poor family living in a rural area. The youngest child, about 3 years old, the eldest is 13. So just imagine how old the other four children are. Their mother, only at an early age of 30, but look at her, her age seems to be out of the calendar. Even worse, none of the children has gone to school yet, and surprisingly, Madame is pregnant to another baby girl, and I always see a mark of disappointment because Mr. wants a son. After all the fights of the couple, we can find Mr. on a nearby beer house 5 blocks away from their spot. No, he doesn’t drink. And no, he doesn’t look for another woman. He seats on a chair together with his friends, some of them at a young age don’t have teeth at all, some were left with their front teeth maybe because they hurry brushing their teeth, running for the next session. Some hurry going home for their work, also for the same reasons: to gamble.

Gambling is primarily thought of as a problem, actually not just for the adults, but for the youth. Studies in several countries were conducted tackling the prevalence of gambling among the high school youths (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador). In Alberta, surveys were done to evaluate the said prevalence, from the age of 7-14 (AADAC, 2005).

I would like to deliver to you this speech, because WE ARE THE YOUTH of today. I will take this opportunity to instill in your minds the consequences of gambling activities, may it be legal or illegal. It affects us, the youth and our family (Hodgins, 2006): our future is in store for this! We could not just be silent here of the situation around us. In the future, we might suffer from the things that we did and the things that we did not. Many lives were destroyed by the addiction that is brought about by this activity. Especially the next generation. Let’s stop this probability. We could do actions to explain to our friends what gambling really is. If there is one thing we can do, that would be doing what is right.

Need step/Problem step

Gambling is a severe problem of today. The problem with us is we are becoming just focused just on ourselves. Yes, we should try to extend our limitations because we are young. We think it is all our parents’ concern. We think all we have to do is to study. No, as part of our country we should be more aware of this thing called gambling. How do we define ambling? People are inclined into games or contests which of course are of two outcomes, either they win or they lose, and usually they give out money or any valuable. This is gambling. Since this is just a mere chance, people tend to risk everything (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador 1992). Some of us don’t know gambling is destroying our morale values. Actually, some of us never thought that gambling has already gambled us, that we are no longer aware that we are already gamblers. It has reached to the level of morale degradation, almost exactly or totally the same with the mentality of the mental patients, where each mental patient suffering to permanent hallucinations don’t know that they are actually mental patients. For some countries, gambling is very rampant, which already confirms cultural decay.

Experts have supported that the cultural values is one of the determinants of the extent to which the cultural decay emanating form gambling will actually affect them. A basic example is the proper use of time (Anbari, Khilkanova, Romanova, & Umpleby, 2004). With the cultures level of appreciation for time, this will somehow dictate their inclination to gambling. Gambling has taken some of us youth out of the real world? It was just in 2005 and ended in 2007, when a survey of the youth of the United States was done. It was found out that 2.1 percent rate increase of the nation’s youth is gambling. If you think that the study is limited and is not representative of the youth of America, then you are wrong.

Statistically the study is 95% confident that that 2.1% is almost the same for all the places (University of Buffalo 2008). Aren’t you alarmed by this figure? Here is for you to visualize. Suppose there are 100 of our schoolmates here who are gamblers. What is the 2.1% of 100? (You may ask the audience about the 2.1% of 100). About two, right? Consider one thousand, or let us say one million youths. For every one million youths, how many youths for the next year shall gamblers? Twenty-one thousand young minds, right. Isn’t this alarming enough? You and me, we can be victims of gambling, and we may not see ourselves already submerged. Gambling occurs everywhere. In fact, there are world gambling championships, giving a sign of the globalization of gambling (Aggarwal 2005).

• Satisfaction/Solutions

Merely educating the people in our places is a nice stepping stone to stop gambling. This may be little by little, but in due time we may be able to lessen the percentage of the rate of gambling all over the world. We should start within us; we should be good    examples among our peers in our communities and of course in the family.

As people who are educated, we can use our access to our academic institutions to help us, together with our mentors to include on our extracurricular activities projects against gambling. We may also cite examples of anonymous people and gambling survivors to see how well they improved in their lifestyles. Community seminars sponsored by the local government officials would help.

Visualizations

Worse thing that can happen is that the education of the youth may be affected since a person who is addicted in gambling might give away everything just to win back whatever he lost. Instead of feeding the family and providing them the needs, it is possible that all the money allotted to it will just go nowhere in the family.

With all into its proper places, the family will have strong relationship because instead of gambling, they will find time for each other. Since the players are shrinking in numbers, they have no choice but to close, and inch by inch we can get rid of them, although it is not 100% possible since many rich people are inclined to it.

Call to action

We tackled about gambling, its prevalence and some of its effects. It is important that we gain knowledge on these things, to give us a clear mind on deciding whether we will even try to engage into gambling or just completely get away with it.

This speech is my specific action against gambling. I am very much alarmed with the propensity of youth to gambling. And you, my classmate ands teachers are intelligent enough to decide. I would definitely go against gambling and any sort of it. May it be small, or in a big time.

Gambling causes no good. If you love your future, do not gamble. Many lives are ruined by gambling, relationships, families set aside for gambling’s sake (University of Iowa 2006). If you love your family, stay away from friends who lead you to gambling, or might as well warn them of the consequences.

References

AADAC. (2005). Youth Gambling in Alberta: The Alberta Youth Experience Survey 2002. Retrieved. from http://www.aadac.com/documents/TAYES_youth_gambling.pdf.

Aggarwal, Mansi. (2005, October 04). World Gambling 101. Ezine Articles. Retrieved May 09, 2008, from http://ezinearticles.com/?World-Gambling-101&id=79079

Anbari, F. T., Khilkanova, E. V., Romanova, M. V., & Umpleby, S. A. (2004). Cross Cultural Differences and Their Implications for Managing International Projects.

Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. (1992, no month and day). Health and Community Services. Retrieved May 10, 2008, from http://www.health.gov.nl.ca/health/commhlth_

old/factlist/gambleupdate.htm 1992

Hodgins, D. (2006, January 4, 2006). Problem gambling. University of Calgary News and Events, from http://www.ucalgary.ca/news/january2007/problem-gambling/

University at Buffalo (2008, May 7). Estimated 750,000 Problem Gamblers Among America’s Youth. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 10, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/05/080506163918.htm

University of Iowa (2006, March 16). Study Finds Pathological Gambling Runs In Families. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 10, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2006/03/060316091857.htm