ACTION to reduce the harm caused by Foxed Odds Betting Terminals has been a long time coming.

No-one can deny the misery that some people have suffered as a result of becoming hooked on this particular form of gambling. What has been surprising is that for something that causes so many problems it has been allowed to go unchecked for so long.

Gambling in various forms causes problems for many people and FOBTs are not the only way people can rack up massive losses and debts.

But the speed at which people can lose money on them and fail as they chase to recoup losses is staggering. And the clue is in the title Fixed Odds, the machines are not random.

So the Government was right to take action to limit the stakes.

For the majority of people placing a bet is harmless whether it is on the machines or on live sporting action.

Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. But for others it takes over their lives and leads to debt, depression and the breakdown of relationships and the break-up of families.

Yet is has become easier to gamble in recent years, on an increasing number of different platforms.

Consider the situation with alcohol. Most people enjoy a drink and alcohol does not cause them serious harm. But for some people it is an addiction and destroys lives.

Because of this the government has measures in place to try and mitigate that damage.

The most recent example is minimum pricing, where a specific group of harmful drinkers are targeted and the products they gravitate towards the most affected.

These machines and the problem gamblers attracted to them are a similar situation. Limiting the amount of money that can be staked on these machines is like tripling the price of cheap white cider.

The problem gambler like the problem drinker might possibly find another way to feed their addiction, but doesn’t mean we shouldn’t act where we can.

The betting industry says this move will lead to betting shops closing and thousands of jobs could be lost.

This is the same industry that denied it was opening up shops in close proximity to one another purely to increase the number of FOBTs is has in any one community.

The latest figures estimated that £35m was post on these machines in Glasgow , that’s around £165,000 for every betting shop in the city.

The machines are clustered in poorer areas.

The Evening Times visited betting shops in Springburn and in Possilpark where there were shops within yards of each other sometimes owned by the same company and the machines were doing a roaring trade in most of them.

Similarly around Central Station we found another cluster. We counted ten shops within yards of a station entrance and each had four machines.

If it doesn’t rely on FOBTs for profits and the existence of stores then it shouldn’t be closing them down. No –one is banning FOBTs. No-one is cutting the number of machine each shop can have so there should be no need for job losses or closures.

No-one wants to see betting shop staff put out of work because of this and unless the whole betting retail model was in fact based on punters losing millions on these machines they shouldn’t have to.