[webkike]

A human can become addicted to literally any behavior. The solution isn’t to make illegal the behaviors that can be harmful when done in excess, it is to provide addiction counseling resources at no cost funded by the people who can control themselves. And higher amounts of control, like allowing users to ban themselves, or indicators that flag users as problem gamblers.

Making the behaviors illegal doesn’t actually help people you mention, it just drives them to less safe avenues and jail. Hardly help if you ask me.

People also have a right to discover for themselves that something is dangerous to them personally. It sucks, but not everyone is going to know off the bat that they have alcoholic tendencies.

[ToucanLoucan]

I find it interesting that everyone is assuming I want gambling made illegal or something, when I said nothing of the sort. The comment I replied to postulates that gambling is fine because it's the person's choice. I replied asking if that was necessarily true given all of what we have learned and are learning about addiction, drawing comparisons to substances/behaviors, illicit and otherwise, that are known to be addictive. And everyone thinks I'm some moral crusader who wants to ban everything.

I don't, FWIW. I just think these questions are important and the answers are more complicated than "everyone can and should do whatever they want" or "everyone has to eat nothing but corn flakes and eschew all temptations in life for Jesus."

Though, I will say that I find it off-putting how many states in my Untied States are apparently totally fine with juicing their budgets with the profits of gambling enterprises. Like... we can definitely have gambling, but it feels exploitative that the state itself is raising money, even if that money is for public services, off the backs of known-to-be-addictive products.

[peepee1982]

Your argument is overly simplistic. Just because people can get addicted to anything doesn’t mean we should do nothing. Relying on personal responsibility alone is a cop-out, especially with something as addictive as sports betting.

Making it taboo or illegal could actually reduce harm by making it less acceptable and accessible. Prevention beats cleanup any day. Let’s not pretend that counseling alone is enough to solve this.

[webkike]

I didn’t say that we should do nothing. What I said is we should do things within a framework that allows people who engage in activities in non harmful ways to continue to do those activities, and to have those people fund helping people who can’t.

That funding can include sweeping out illegal gambling operations that prey on vulnerable people. No one would mind taking them out of there are legal options available to them.

[peepee1982]

That sounds fine to me. But legal gambling preys on vulnerable people, too. Gambling is highly addictive.

[dwighttk]

I don’t remember the number but it was something like a large single digit increase in personal bankruptcy in states that legalized gambling vs states that haven’t.

[peepee1982]

You mean in percent? Decrease? Increase?

[dwighttk]

yes percent

I wrote increase