Editorial

15:26 JST, December 15, 2025

There has been a series of cases in which police took action because minors allegedly gambled through online casinos. Young people are particularly susceptible to gambling addiction. Children and others must be protected by severing their connections to casinos.

Since February, the Metropolitan Police Department has referred to prosecutors or notified child consultation centers about 15 people, in Tokyo and nine prefectures, aged 13 to 21 on suspicion of charges such as habitual gambling. All are suspected of having gambled at online casinos using cryptocurrency assets.

Nine of the 15 people were junior high or high school students. A first-year junior high school boy’s smartphone indicated that he had placed 7,000 bets, for a........

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