The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board has approved petitions by its Office of Enforcement Counsel to ban seven adults from all casinos in the state for leaving a total of nine children unattended while the adults gambled.

Since the beginning of 2022, almost there have almost 400 incidents of adults leaving 633 kids unattended while the adults gambled. Unattended children happens so often that the Gaming Control Board has an on-going awareness campaign called “Don’t Gamble With Kids.”

With us on The Spark Thursday was Douglas Harbach, Director of Communications foe the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board who said,"They aren't thinking, which is is part of the problem. But one of the ideas of not just the campaign that we put in place, but also what the casinos are doing and they are really going to great lengths to identify these people and put out the message that this is unacceptable behavior, that they're getting the message. Those numbers. They're very, very disturbing. It certainly happens to places outside of casinos. But our regulatory authority has to do with the casinos. And that's what we're putting our efforts toward. The other issue with these individuals are is they likely have a gambling problem. And we have millions of millions of dollars that are brought in from the casinos into the state to help these individuals."

Harbach indicated that those who leave kids unattended can be banned from casinos or even face child endangerment criminal charges.

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