The rate of high risk gambling in New Jersey is around three times higher than the national average.

That's according to a new report put out by Rutgers School of Social Work and touted by the state's attorney general.

The report underscores the various ways that gaming and gambling activities are overseen and regulated in the state.

Melissa Rose Cooper has more on what's being done to consider policy changes with regard to player protection and responsible gaming.

You can't smell it like drugs or alcohol.

You could see that.

You could see there's certain physical signs very, very difficult to identify someone with a gambling problem.

Yet gambling is an addiction that affects many residents, according to Felicia GRONDIN of the Council on Compulsive Gambling in New Jersey.

Our 800 gambler helpline has been extremely busy over the last number of years since 2006.

We had a 225% increase in our helpline calls.

So people are struggling.

According to a new report following up on a 2017 analysis of the prevalence of gambling in New Jersey, roughly 61% of residents gambled in the past year.

That's down from 70% in 2017.

But data citing COVID as a likely factor for the decline.

But at the same time, the study shows online gambling has tripled from 5 to 15%.

And the amount of people gambling, both online and in-person, nearly doubled from 19 to about 36%.

We've seen that in the revenue numbers as well.

So Internet gaming has really been increasing in popularity since the pandemic, especially it was growing year over year before the pandemic, but at a much slower pace.

During the pandemic it really jumped and since then it's been a little more than a third of the industry's total gross gaming revenue.

But with increased state revenue from the industry comes great concern.

You just can pick up your phone and you can lose tens of thousands of dollars within minutes.

The general public really never sees the dark side of gambling.

They never see the people that have lost relationships college savings, bank accounts.

And that contemplates suicide.

Problem gamblers have a very high rate of probability that they will consider suicide.

In fact, it's the highest of any addiction where they were 20% rate of people contemplating suicide.

Those people that have a gambling problem.

There's also concerns of how easy access to gambling is attracting more younger residents.

This study finding a third of online gamblers are 18 to 24 years old.

Almost five times as many than reported in 2017 and more than any other age group.

The state of New Jersey and our department and me as attorney general, we take this really serious.

State Attorney General Matt Platkin says the state is committed to addressing these issues, launching an initiative last year through the Division of Gaming Enforcement, encouraging responsible gambling.

And what that does is it uses the data that these operators are already tracking about players on their online platforms to identify people who may show early signs of problems gambling down to their last dollar, going to a self-exclusion page on casino's website but not actually clicking a button.

Gambling more and more each week.

Things that we know are indicators of problematic gambling behavior and then implementing at each stage interventions to hopefully stop that behavior.

The attorney general says the state is also working on advertising best practices, like prohibiting gambling ads in places where underage individuals are predominantly located, as well as making sure companies aren't marketing products that would encourage problematic gambling.

For NJ Spotlight News I'm Melissa Rose Cooper