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When fourth-year history student Daniel Gushue started gambling online on his 18th birthday, he said he never could have guessed that four years later gambling would lead him to drop classes, ruin a relationship, and acquire a $19,000 credit card debt.

“I started gambling around the same time I started drinking,” he said. “In college, people find themselves drinking, being alone, and turning to the easily accessible computer.”

But what started off as a form of entertainment and money-making eventually turned into an addiction.

“It got so bad that at one point I was playing eight hours a day, five days a week,” Gushue said. “It was like a full-time job where I lost money.”

With the Internet becoming more widely popular and certain online gambling sites not strictly enforcing age restrictions, online gambling, which may involve cards, sports or bingo, has become a $6 billion industry. It is a large problem, especially among young people, said Timothy Fong, co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program.

A problem gambler is defined as someone who continues to gamble despite the negative effects such as financial loss, impaired health or ruined relationships, Fong said.

Along with online gambling addictions come many other problems including alcoholism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression and other personality disorders, said Ari Kalechstein, the consulting neuropsychologist for the UCLA Gambling Studies Program.

Three to 6 percent of the college population has a problem with online gambling, Fong said.

“It’s easy, fast, fun, profitable, other peers seem to be doing it, and there’s competition involved,” he said.

The main factor driving the increase in online gambling is the loose enforcement of restrictions by companies running the Web sites on underage gamblers, said Bruce Roberts, the executive director of the California Counsel on Problem Gambling.

“Any young person with a credit card can be at a gambling site in a minute despite the controls that may be set up,” he said.

Most college students start gambling online for convenience, said Rojen Gharagedaghi, a second-year mathematics student who started gambling when he came to UCLA.

“I had no ride, so instead of going to the casino, I brought the casino to me,” Gharagedaghi said.

Others, such as Gushue and second-year chemistry student Garni Arakelian, said they started gambling to make what seemed to be easy money.

“Instead of actually going to work for 10 hours, I could make the same amount of money in three hours sitting in front of my computer,” Arakelian said.

Yet the games are more difficult than one would expect, Gushue said.

“It is too easy to lose because you don’t see the actual money and chips in front of you,” he said. “You lose the value of money.”

Unlike gambling in casinos, online gambling is an isolated activity. This makes it much harder to win because people cannot gauge play based on other players’ reactions, Gharagedaghi said.

In response to these disadvantages, this past October President Bush signed into law an act placing more restrictions on online gambling transactions. But gambling sites, such as those based overseas, continue to find ways around it.

“The problem is that there is little enforcement of the law, (making it) an unregulated industry,” Fong said. “Colleges don’t have provisions or mechanisms to prevent students from going to online gambling sites either in the dorms or on campus.”

The UCLA Gambling Studies Program is starting a research project in January focusing on online gambling patterns and treatment in college students, Fong said.

“The problem of online gambling can (be likened to) the problem of HIV,” Fong said. “It is as if more people were to get HIV because there are more risk factors, but no treatment or solution is available. We aim to obtain more knowledge about online gambling and find that solution.”