Gambling in Malaysia: an overview

Abstract

Many forms of gambling are legal and popular in Malaysia. Despite this, in Malaysia, research into gambling is limited and there is no coherent strategy to tackle gambling-related harms. This paper summarises the gambling landscape of Malaysia, law governing gambling and research done so far and gives some recommendations on the way forward.

Full text

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SPECIAL
PAPER Gambling in Malaysia: an overview
Balan Rathakrishnan
1
and Sanju George
2
Many forms of gambling are legal and popular
in Malaysia. Despite this, in Malaysia, research
into gambling is limited and there is no
coherent strategy to tackle gambling-related
harms. This paper summarises the gambling
landscape of Malaysia, law governing
gambling and research done so far and gives
some recommendations on the way forward.
Malaysia is a South East Asian country with a
population of approximately 32.37 million peo-
ple. Malaysia gained independence from the
British Empire in 1963. Islam is the predominant
religion (61.3%), followed by Buddhism (19.8%),
Christianity (9.2%) and Hinduism (6.3%), and
the rest practice traditional Chinese religions.
1
Gambling is forbidden under Islamic law (Sharia
law) so most Muslims do not engage in legal gam-
bling. As Malaysia has a multi-ethnic population,
with Malay making up 63%, Chinese making up
approximately 25% and those with Indian ances-
try making up 12% of the total 32.37 million
population, it is these latter groups who gamble
more through legal means and who spend more
on gambling.
2,3
‘Gambling disorder’sits alongside the more
traditional substance addictions in DSM-5. In
ICD-11, the ICD-10 term ‘pathological gambling’
is replaced by ‘gambling disorder’.
Gambling in Malaysia
It would appear that gambling was ‘brought’to
Malaysia by Chinese merchants in the 19th
century. Gambling, both legal and illegal forms,
is very popular in Malaysia.
4
Some forms of gam-
bling, such as lotteries, casino games and horse
racing, are legal in Malaysia, whereas all forms
of sports betting (at bookmakers) and online gam-
bling are illegal. Gambling is legal only if a license
or permit has been granted by the authorities –
the Unit Kawalan Perjudian (Betting Control
Unit) of the Ministry of Finance. Lotteries in
Malaysia are allowed under the Lotteries Act
1952. Currently, there are six legal lotteries (all
privately owned) in Malaysia). Alongside these,
there exist several illegal lottery businesses and it
was estimated that in 2018 ‘Malaysia’s illegal lot-
tery business generated about 60 percent more
revenue than the six legal operators combined’.
5
There is only one legal land-based casino in
Malaysia. This privately owned casino was set up
in the 1970s in a very ‘Las Vegas style’and is
open 24 h a day but denies entry to Muslims
and those under 21 years of age. This casino
offers over 400 types of electronic table games,
3000 slot machines and 30 tables with games
such as blackjack, tai sai, roulette and boule.
Horse racing was introduced in Malaysia by
the British during the 1800s and currently there
are three racecourses and betting on horses is
1
Associate Professor, Faculty of
Psychology and Education,
Malaysia University of Sabah
(UMS), Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia.
Email: rbhalan@ums.edu.my
2
Professor of Psychiatry and
Psychology, Rajagiri School of
Behavioural Sciences and
Research, Rajagiri College of
Social Sciences (Autonomous),
Kochi, Kerala, India. Email:
sanjugeorge531@gmail.com
Keywords. Gambling; law;
Malaysia; research.
First received 13 May 2020
Accepted 17 Sep 2020
doi:10.1192/bji.2020.55
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020.
Published by Cambridge
University Press on behalf of the
Royal College of Psychiatrists.
This is an Open Access article,
distributed under the terms of
the Creative Commons
Attribution licence (http://creative
commons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),
which permits unrestricted re-use,
distribution, and reproduction in
any medium, provided the ori-
ginal work is properly cited.
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legal. All three racecourses are privately owned
and are regulated by the Racing Act 1961.
6
Despite being illegal, online gambling has been
increasing in popularity over the past few years in
Malaysia. Betting on badminton and football
(mostly English football –the Premier League) is
immensely popular. Technological advancements
have made online gambling opportunities more
accessible and more affordable. Although illegal,
international betting sites accept customers from
Malaysia and process deposits and withdrawals
in ringgits (RM, the Malaysian currency).
Gambling laws in Malaysia
There are three major legal frameworks that dic-
tate gambling laws in Malaysia: the Betting Act
1953, the Common Gaming Houses Act 1953
and Shariah law. The Betting Act 1953 (with sev-
eral further amendments) is the most important
of these.
7
This Act bans all forms of gambling
unless the company has a legal license to operate
and covers telecommunications and other means
of transmitting bets between customers and betting
houses. As per this Act, anyone caught running a
betting house or caught in one will be penalised
with a RM200 000 fine and 5 years in jail.
The Common Gaming Houses Act 1953 (with
further amendments) is more inclusive than the
Betting Act in its coverage of types of gambling.
7
The Common Gaming Houses Act defines gam-
ing as: ‘the playing of any game of chance or of
mixed chance and skill for money or money’s
worth’. In the 2020 budget plan for Malaysia,
8
the Finance Minister announced an increase in
punishments for both illegal gamblers and gam-
bling operators. The maximum penalty for
those who gamble illegally was increased 20-fold,
from RM5000 to RM100 000, and a minimum
jail sentence of 6 months was introduced.
Islam being the predominant religion,
Malaysia also recognises Sharia law and Sharia
(or Syariah) courts. Non-Malays (mostly ethnic
Chinese and Indian) are not bound by Sharia
law but by the secular legal system. All forms of
gambling are forbidden under the Sharia law.
Gambling research in Malaysia
Gambling research in Malaysia has been limited.
Tan et al
3
analysed data from 6117 non-
Muslim households for sociodemographic deter-
minants of gambling participation and gambling
expenditure. They found that the sociodemo-
graphic factors associated with higher levels of gam-
bling expenditure were being young, Chinese,
having lower education levels and higher income,
and being from paternal-headed families.
Two hundred patrons of the only casino in
Malaysia were examined for their demographics,
gambling behaviour and factors contributing to
gambling decisions.
9
It was found that marketing
activities such as promotions, services, positioning
and winnings predicted greater gambling behav-
iour, whereas psychological variables such as motiv-
ation, personality, perception and cognition did not.
Loo & Ang
10
studied the prevalence of problem
gambling in Malaysia’s largest state (Selangor, with
a population of 5.6 million) and found that 4.4% of
the general population were problem gamblers
and 10.2% were moderate-risk gamblers.
Loft & Loo
11
analysed sleep difficulty, sleep
habits, arousability, self-regulatory capacity and
problem-gambling severity in 59 treatment-
seeking gamblers and noted that self-regulatory
capacity mediated the relationship between prob-
lem gambling and sleep difficulty, and that it was
a significant mediator between problem gambling
and negative sleep habits.
In a more recent study, Sheela et al
12
looked at
2265 Malaysian adolescents and found that
around 30% of them participated in some form
of gambling over a 12-month period. They also
noted that parental gambling, being male and
high-risk behaviours were associated closely with
adolescent gambling.
Treatment services for gamblers in
Malaysia
There are no structured gambling treatment facilities
in the public sector in Malaysia. Several private
rehabilitation centres offer residential and out-
patient help for problem gamblers. There are no off-
line Gamblers Anonymous (GA) meetings in
Malaysia but online access to GA is possible. We are
aware that private psychiatric hospitals and addiction
specialists offer individual psychotherapies (mostly
cognitive–behavioural therapy) for problem gam-
blers and supportive psychotherapy to their families.
Anecdotes suggest that most people with
gambling-related problems go unrecognised and
untreated. Problems often only come to light
when they are severe or when the gambler
comes to the attention of the legal system for
gambling-related debt, bankruptcy, financial
fraud, domestic violence and other crimes.
The way forward
The issue of gambling in an Islamic country like
Malaysia is fraught with difficulties, unlike in
more secular countries. This is because of
Malaysia’s unique dual system of law –the
Sharia-governed Syariah courts for the nation’s
Muslims (over half of the total population),
which strongly oppose gambling, and secular
law that is less rigid in its take on gambling.
First, there needs to be a wider debate on
whether gambling ought to be banned altogether
in Malaysia or whether it can be liberalised (at
least in certain forms) and tightly regulated.
Such a debate needs to involve multiple stake
holders, including policy makers, academics,
healthcare professionals and the gambling indus-
try. At the very least, existing legislation needs to
be updated to include online gambling in its vari-
ous guises. Second, more needs to be done to
minimise gambling-related harm and it might be
best to start with public health approaches such
as awareness-raising campaigns about various
aspects of gambling, its potential for harm, signs
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and symptoms, how to seek help, banning and
enforcement thereof of gambling advertisements
and promotions (in both print and online
media) and the increasing in-counter-advertising
whereby this type of advertisement focuses on cer-
tain issues, persons or products to take a stand
against other adverstisements in regards to con-
troversial topics. Third, treatment services for
Malaysia’s problem gamblers and their families
need to be expanded into the public sector as
well. Given that gambling is illegal and banned
under Sharia law in Malaysia, it is best viewed as
a mental health problem with adverse public health
impact. Healthcare service providers and health
policy makers need to work together to provide
psychological and psychiatric treatments in the
community and hospital settings. This should
include rehabilitation centres for those addicted.
Fourth, more research needs to be done into the
prevalence of problem gambling and gambling-
related harms. Finally, we believe that developing
a national gambling strategy and having an inde-
pendent body to oversee it will aid the translation
of the above suggestions into reality.
Author contributions
B.R. contributed to the gathering of information
on gambling issues in Malaysia, both legal and
illegal, and how people’s perception of gambling
has changed in Malaysia. S.G. contributed to the
overall idea and structure of this manuscript. He
provided the element on the treatment of gam-
bling and addicted behavior.
Declaration of interests
None.
ICMJE forms are in the supplementary mater-
ial, available online at https://doi.org/10.1192/bji.
2020.55.
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SPECIAL
PAPER International experience of hikikomori
(prolonged social withdrawal) and its
relevance to psychiatric research
Marcus P. J. Tan,
1
William Lee
2
and Takahiro A. Kato
3
When prolonged social withdrawal was first
described in Japan as ‘hikikomori’, many
studies examining its etiology suggested it to
be related to factors unique to Japan and thus
a culture-bound syndrome. However, existing
research has suffered from a lack of
standardised definitions, impeding
comparability between studies. We summarise
existing research and discuss its relevance to
psychiatric practice today.
What is hikikomori?
In Japan, there exists the term ‘hikikomori’, used
to refer to a particularly severe form of social
withdrawal. The term is part of the everyday lexi-
con in the Japanese language, where it is a com-
pound verb made up of the two characters for
‘to pull back’(hiku) and ‘to seclude oneself’
(komoru), and is used to describe a person’s delib-
erate seclusion of themselves from mainstream
society.
1
The term was introduced to the medical
community by the Japanese psychiatrist Tamaki
1
ST5 Trainee in Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry, South
London and Maudsley NHS
Foundation Trust, UK. Email:
MPJTan@doctors.org.uk
2
Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist,
Devon Partnership NHS Trust,
Exeter, UK
3
Associate Professor, Department
of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate
School of Medical Sciences,
Kyushu University, Japan
Keywords. Aetiology; transcultural
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