[pjc50]

This is a "vice" thing. Vices are things which match this pattern like alcohol or drugs:

    - many people don't indulge at all
    - many people indulge occasionally to no real harm
    - some people indulge in a way that makes a short term recoverable mess
    - a few people get addicted and are unable to stop. May or may not also be harmed at this point, but this tends to lead to cumulative harm
    - a few people really mess up tragically

The people in the first few groups can argue "why should this be banned, it's not harming me" with some validity. But there's also people for whom the vice overrides their self-preservation and they get into a bad financial and/or health position, and can only be saved by abstention. They may require help to abstain, such as the UK "legitimate" gambling industry's "self-ban" mechanism.

[tialaramex]

One thing that does vary is whether "it's not harming me" works out. Booze in particular has massive social consequences, drunk people harm non-drinkers not just themselves. I've never worried that degenerate gamblers leaving a slot machine parlour at 2am will attack me - but outside the bars that's definitely possible which is why they're required to hire security and have police contact

[lmz]

Some gamblers will inevitably run out of money and resort to crime.

[StilesCrisis]

I think this description is deceptive because it assumes bucket sizes ("many," "some," "a few"). Those bucket sizes work for alcohol and some recreational drugs. But they're tragically wrong for others--very very few people partake of heroin "occasionally with no real harm." You're almost certainly heading towards the last two buckets.

[pjc50]

True, but if you start counting codeine as an opiate the bucket gets a lot larger. And includes the Purdue Pharma scandal. Lots of people use opiates under medical supervision, with varying degrees of help and harm.

> assumes bucket sizes ("many," "some," "a few")

I was trying to be as vague as possible here!

[ligne]

...which is definitely an improvement over their previous slogan, "when the fun stops, stop"¹.

__ ¹ coincidentally what my Dad always used to say about black tar heroin.