Following health risks posed due to online gambling public health officials across Quebec on Thursday urged the province to step back from its plan for online gambling.

Loto-Québec was planning to launch an online gambling site that was to start in September. The lottery corporation said that this move was expected to make over $50 million in revenue by 2013.

This site was expected to thwart about 2000 already working gambling sites online. A majority of these sites are not legal.

Dr Richard Lessard, Montreal's public health director while stating that online gambling was bad for health said that it is much easier for someone to become addicted to gambling if they play online.

Lessard said, "It's too soon to go online. We think there should be a moratorium on the implementation of online gambling, and during that one year or more period, we think there should be an expert committee to analyze the impact on health in particular."

Finance Minister Raymond Bachand said, “It’s not for monetary reasons that Sweden and Great Britain and the northern European countries have gone into that. The role of the state is to channel gambling in a responsible manner.”