- The Texas Medical Association is urging state lawmakers to put an age limit on prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket and to ban the platforms from advertising to children.
- Prediction markets set their minimum age at 18, the threshold for federally regulated trading, meaning a Texas high school senior can legally trade on game outcomes in a state where sportsbooks, which typically require bettors to be 21, are banned entirely.
- A Baylor College of Medicine pediatrician leading the push warns that adolescent brains are more vulnerable to gambling addiction, and says the proposal has drawn bipartisan interest at the Capitol.
- Any Texas crackdown faces a federal wall: the CFTC claims exclusive authority over the platforms and has sued states that tried to restrict them.
- The push lands as prediction market use surges during the World Cup and as new research ties gambling expansion to measurable financial harm in vulnerable households.
AUSTIN – The loudest new voice in the fight over gambling in Texas does not belong to a casino magnate or a crusading politician. It belongs to the state’s doctors, and they are worried about teenagers.
The Texas Medical Association, the state’s largest physician group, is pressing lawmakers to impose an age restriction on prediction market platforms and to bar them from advertising to children, arguing the fast-growing apps expose young people to addictive gambling behavior. KERA News reported the proposal Tuesday, quoting Dr. Lindy McGee, a Baylor College of Medicine pediatrician and former chair of the association’s child and adolescent health committee, who warned that “high school seniors are legally walking around with Vegas in their pockets.”
She is describing a real gap. Platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket let users trade yes-or-no contracts on the outcome of nearly anything, a World Cup match, an election, a chart-topping song, and because they are regulated as federal financial exchanges rather than sportsbooks, their minimum age is 18, the age of majority for entering binding contracts. State-licensed sportsbooks generally require bettors to be 21. Texas bans those sportsbooks altogether, yet an 18-year-old Texan with a smartphone and a debit card can lawfully take a position on a game through prediction markets in Texas today.
That is precisely what alarms the physicians. McGee told KERA that adolescents have weaker impulse control and a stronger drive toward risk-taking, that earlier exposure to gambling makes later addiction more likely, and that gambling problems in young people carry devastating consequences, including elevated suicide risk. She said the association is already talking with lawmakers and has heard bipartisan support for an age limit and an advertising ban aimed at children, and she argued enforcement should target the companies rather than the young users.
The doctors are pushing on a door Texas officials have started to eye. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick directed a Senate committee this spring to study how the state might close what he called gambling loopholes, singling out the prediction platforms that operate freely in a state where sports wagering is illegal. Texas is one of 11 states with no legal sports betting, yet the platforms’ rise has made them the most accessible gambling sites in Texas, delivering wagering to Texans without the Legislature ever casting a vote.
But any Texas crackdown runs into a federal wall. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission insists it holds exclusive authority over the exchanges, and it has sued to block states that tried to restrict them, five at last count, according to the Texas Tribune, which also reported that 15 states have sued, investigated or sent cease-and-desist letters to the operators. The platforms argue their users are not placing bets at all but trading regulated financial contracts, and Kalshi’s head of corporate development has said federal oversight is adequate. Notably, when 39 state attorneys general signed a brief arguing the CFTC does not hold sole authority over the markets, Texas, for all its anti-gambling fervor, never responded to the invitation to join, according to emails obtained by the Tribune.
The medical association’s entry reframes the question. The Capitol fight over prediction markets has mostly been a turf war, states versus federal regulators, casinos versus exchanges. The doctors are arguing about brains: that whatever these platforms are called under securities law, an 18-year-old trading on games experiences them as gambling, at the age when the habit is most likely to take root. Emerging research gives the concern weight; a National Bureau of Economic Research study released in June found that expanding legal sports wagering measurably reduced household food sufficiency among vulnerable groups, part of a growing body of evidence that gambling’s costs concentrate on those least equipped to absorb them.
Whether Texas can act is another matter. The Legislature does not convene again until 2027, any restriction would invite an immediate federal preemption challenge, and the state’s own posture under Texas gambling laws remains a paradox: hard prohibition on paper, a booming unregulated reality on every teenager’s phone. The doctors, at least, have decided the second part is the emergency.