Internet poker is easy and private. All it takes is a computer and a credit card. And some of the Web sites let you start playing without the credit card. It looks easy to win, so easy, in fact, that a national epidemic is sweeping the country, and it has come to our part of Maine.

Cases of addictive online poker playing have cropped up in Orono at the University of Maine and at local high schools. Dean Robert Dana tells of a university student who lost “many thousands of dollars” at online poker a few years ago and in desperation sought counseling. The dean says he knows that some area high school students are deep into Internet poker.

While some Maine school and law enforcement officials say they know of no online poker addiction problems, most of them are bracing for an onslaught that is plaguing other parts of the country.

Nationally, card-game gambling in 2005, spurred by high-pressure Internet poker sites, increased by 20 percent over 2004, according to the latest annual survey of youth risks by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. The study concluded that 580,000 young people aged 14 to 22 gamble on the Internet on a weekly basis. Most of them are under 21.

Ten percent of the 900 young people surveyed said gambling had put them into debt. The researchers calculated total indebtedness of $115 million for the nation’s 16 million youthful monthly gamblers.

Dan Romer, director of the Annenberg survey, blames publicity about poker winnings in television shows and news articles for contributing to the surge in Internet poker. He quotes Zachary Dzurick, a Cleveland sports writer, as having been urged by a publicist, Todd Brabender, to write a story about the winners in a recent college poker tournament. Mr. Dzurick asked about the losers as well, but Mr. Brabender e-mailed back that he could identify “only the winners.”

Dean Dana, at Orono, says the university relies on counseling rather than computer filters to help students who get over their heads in gambling debts. Jeff Mao, a computer specialist in the Maine Department of Education, says that filters can block gambling sites, as they do pornography, but no filter is perfect and sometimes counseling may be preferable.

The National Council on Problem Gambling is right in describing underage and problem gambling as a “medical disorder” and is proposing a comprehensive program that would include prevention, education, treatment and research as well as enforcement.