[stahorn]

I think it's similar with all things that hook into our dopamine centers, like alcohol, food, sugar foods, tobacco, gambling, drugs, games, ... It has to be regulated to the correct amount to benefit society. Outlawing them, like with prohibition in United States, just moves it all to black markets. Having them completely free, as has been the case with all of them at some point, also brings harm to society. Somewhere in between those two points is where it's correctly regulated.

For example, maybe gamling can continue being legal but advertising for it be outlawed or severely restricted? Can gambling have the same sort of warnings as on cigarettes, maybe with children going hungry because the parent gambled away all the money for the month? Another way is that some part of the revenue from gambling could go to programs such as Bolsa Família that you bring up? Or to fight gambling addiction in some way?

That's my pragmatic view of these types of thing: try to find what actually works and hurts society the least. You'll never find any perfect system with no harm anyway.

[viccis]

>Outlawing them, like with prohibition in United States, just moves it all to black markets.

Ok, good, fine. You should have to seek out a black market connect to gamble on sports.

[tyree731]

Maybe a fine approach for the individual, but then the black market, and its general disregard for the law or the well being of others, comes along with them.

[bbor]

I’m pretty happy with our “no murdering” setup, even though it makes some people happy (in the moment).

IMO there’s plenty of room for hardline stances. Who cares if gambling goes to the black market? There’s a black market for every serious crime - doesn’t mean we should just okay it. And I’m not sure the USA’s halfhearted only-for-the-poor prohibition is proof that the concept of banning things is broken; if it proves anything unrelated to capitalism, it proves that you need societal buy-in and continued, consistent government pressure.

[vladms]

I think the problem is more the banning does not address the root cause and will not increase societal buy-in, hence will waste a lot of energy without a result.

Alcohol consumption is currently dropping in many (not all places) in Europe (some ref: https://www.euronews.com/health/2024/08/21/dry-january-where...), without any bans, so compared to the prohibition episode I would claim that it would be better to insist on finding and implementing "efficient stances".

[CodeGroyper]

So what? It's pretty hard to tackle the root causes of anything and we are plenty happy with solutions that stop bad habits in other ways. Should we have the FDA just ban harmful substances or do we need to educate everyone about everything eatable? Surely education would be better, but it's just not feasible and creating a world in which you have to dodge yet another scam seems bad to me.