Many years ago I worked at a company that had Ladbrokes in the UK as a customer. On my first visit to London, I noticed their storefronts and found them appalling. They were some of the sorriest, shabbiest public spaces I'd seen, clearly designed to extract resources from the least well off.
I don't really buy any of the arguments in favor of widespread legalization (and I include state lotteries in this). I could be ok with legalization for a few big events like the NCAA tournament because clearly there is some demand that must be met, but we should not be enabling gambling as a widespread daily habit.
Of course there will always be black market gambling and the state cannot protect its citizens from every evil, but nor should it actively enable them.
There is demand it's not clear that it "must be met." The problem is not the betting or oddsmaking, the problem is, how do you handle settlements?
You're presenting the false dichotomy, that we should just allow gambling, because it's inevitable, and we can occasionally use the violence of the state and it's courts to run the settlement racket on behalf of short changed bookies.
> but we should not be enabling gambling
And we have no reason to. We should harshly penalize people who try to collect on gambling debt and they should have no access to the courts or to sheriff's over problems arising from it.
> cannot protect its citizens from every evil
That's why this is all so insidious because it's really only one you need to actually protect them from. Suddenly you'll find the industry self regulating customers with an obvious illness out at the front door. They'll get amazingly good at this.