zlacker

>>jimbob+(OP)
Unfortunately Brazil also legalized it in 2018, after Dilma was impeached using very sketchy arguments (many call it a legal coup).

It is spreading as a cancer. This month the central bank published a report saying that in August 20% of the Bolsa Família, the largest money transfer program for very poor Brazilians, was spent on these bets.

Out of the 20 million people that receive it, 5 million made bets during that month. This is 2 billion reais (about $450M) spent in a single month by the poorest Brazilians.

It's a cancer. Everywhere you go there are ads. The influencers, the biggest athletes and musicians are marketing it.

Although I tend to be liberal, this needs to be heavily regulated.

>>vitorb+UI1
We’ve spent years conditioning an entire generation of kids on quick hits of dopamine from mobile phone apps. I personally believe that it’s a “glitch in the matrix” for a large enough segment of the population to cause societal chaos.

As a libertarian however, I break with the opinion of making consensual activities illegal even if they are self-harming. So I guess my stance is probably the same as addictive drugs. They could be legal, but come with the same labeling, warnings, ID requirements and age restrictions that come with a pack of cigarettes. We should probably be educating kids about the dangers of addictive apps like we once did with DARE on the dangers of drugs.

>>oceanp+PK1
It's funny you mention DARE because studies have shown the program was a complete failure, along with the War on Drugs™ and "Just Say No". The only reason it continued as long as it did was not because it was effective, but because it was popular with politicians and the general public because they thought – intuitively – that the program should work. It did not reduce student drug use. In face, it backfired and taught kids about interesting drugs that they probably wouldn't have found learned about otherwise. This ineffective program cost U.S. taxpayers $750M per year for 26 years. Let's not do that again.

>>caseyo+XL1
What did work for smoking? From my understanding, that dropped significantly. Could we do what worked for smoking?

>>Fire-D+FS1
Other replies have mentioned the positive reasons why smoking declined, and I'd like to believe that because I want to imitate it in my country. But in my most skeptical heart I suspect it's because of marijuana and vape instead. I haven't researched further to support this hypothesis but the first Google hit I get looks confirming.