There's a false dichotomy between prohibition and laissez-faire, which the US seems particularly prone to. You've seen similar issues with the decriminalisation of cannabis, where many states seem to have switched abruptly from criminalisation to a fully-fledged commercial market. There is a broad spectrum of other options in between those points that tend to be under-discussed.
You can ban gambling advertising, as Italy did in 2019. You can set limits on maximum stakes or impose regulations to make gambling products less attractive to new customers and less risky for problem gamblers. You can have a single state-controlled parimutuel operator. Gambling does cause harm - whether it's legal or not - but it is within the purview of legislators to create a gambling market in which harm reduction is the main priority.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/high-stakes-gambl...
Gambling, however has previously in the U.S. shown to be the leading cause of suicide attempts (20% in total) among all forms of addiction [1]. A body of evidence has also demonstrated it leads to divorce, bankruptcy, poor health and sometimes incarceration. Worth noting many of these studies centered around machine gambling and all forms of gambling are unique in terms of tendency for compulsion. Considering the landscape it is quite difficult for me to see a way of regulating out of this, not in the U.S. at least.
[1] Zangeneh and Hason 2006, 191-93
If you read some papers on the subject it should be plenty apparent that it has adverse effects on the development of young adults, as well as long term use by anyone, particularly of recent high-potency strains.
It's not as bad as other drugs (heroine), and it's worse than others (coffee), but it's not harmless. I'm far from being a prohibitionist, and live somewhere that has (I think) sensible policies (The Netherlands), but to simply put that it's "fairly harmless" as something most physicians agree with is not true. I'd say it's similar to alcohol in terms of its moderate use being possible in a working society - albeit with some negative outcomes for people that overdo it, or do it too early in life.
Edit: there's lots of discussion below about if the studies that exist are trustworthy or not, but since anyone can google for studies, I'll leave a different recommendation to check out the r/Leaves subreddit, and read some first hand accounts of long term and heavy users. It's at least a different type of source and you can make up your own mind about what real users say about it, in case you never encountered it before.
Worth noting our current overdose crisis and general lack of health care in many parts of the country, now the under-prescription of controlled medications- which all helps shift a lot of these dynamics in a direction that might not be seen in other parts of the world.
> You can ban gambling advertising, as Italy did in 2019
this has been widely sidestepped, betting companies now advertise something like "sport-results.com" and then that one has a prominent link to the betting site.
It's a recreational drug. Unless a patient needs it to counter some other malady such as for pain relief, most doctors will say that less is better and none is best.
Where we fall on that spectrum is generally a matter of culture, rather than regulation. American culture is one of maximalism, especially when it comes to commercialization.
So I just wanted to add that for a subset of the population, the risks are several orders of magnitude more serious than "lost a few IQ points", as many people are not able to resume normal life (nor indeed, a normal experience of reality) after a psychotic experience.
That being said, I do support legalization, since the alternatives are worse. I just also support people being well informed, and aware that while they're probably not in that 2%, there's only one way to find out, and you really, really don't want to find out.
American culture is not one of maximalism. Going overseas I was surprised to see tobacco products and beer legal at 16 or 18, people drinking alcohol in the open at parks, soft-porn on late-night broadcast TV, and newsstands with uncovered porn magazines.
All of which are commercialization.
Further, a maximalism interpretation can't be used to understand American culture pre-1974, when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibited banks from preventing women from getting a bank account, nor pre-1964, when the Civil Rights Act prohibited most businesses from preventing blacks from exercising the same commercial maximalism as whites.
"
There is substantial evidence of a statistical association between cannabis use and:
The development of schizophrenia or other psychoses, with the highest risk among the most frequent users (12-1) There is moderate evidence of a statistical association between cannabis use and:
Better cognitive performance among individuals with psychotic disorders and a history of cannabis use (12-2a) Increased symptoms of mania and hypomania in individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorders (regular cannabis use) (12-4) A small increased risk for the development of depressive disorders (12-5) Increased incidence of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts with a higher incidence among heavier users (12-7a) Increased incidence of suicide completion (12-7b) Increased incidence of social anxiety disorder (regular cannabis use) (12-8b)"
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2017. The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids: The Current State of Evidence and Recommendations for Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/24625.
I would warrant that these summaries should be a concern for anyone using cannabis and that blanket statements regarding the overall tone and summation of the report negating health effects of cannabis is somewhat misguided.
9pm, and it's wall-to-wall.
Ironically, this is around the same time as bans on smoking in pubs, and tobacco advertising became draconian.
But gambling doesn't do any first-order physical harm, so it's all good, right?
Seeing betting firms on the front of football teams' shirts offends me.
> When Tony Blair's Labour government introduced the Gambling Act in 2005, it allowed gambling firms to advertise sports betting, poker and online casinos on TV and radio for the first time.
One regulation would be banning gambling advertising, for the same reason why smoking ads are (I think?) banned. It is especially nefarious how companies lure in new customers with free bets, often with unscrupulous cash-out conditions, in order to get people hooked. It’s the equivalent of ads providing someone a coupon code to get several boxes of free cigarettes, at which point they get hooked.
Another change I’d like to see is the end of mobile gambling. I’ve never done it, but from watching friends do it, it was far too easy to deposit money, or borrow money on credit, and bet it frivolously. At least if such behavior is confined to a casino, there is some larger barrier to entry for people.
I do not know if this is true in other states, but certain states have the ability for an individual to self-institute a gambling ban at all facilities in the state. I’m not sure if this applies to gambling online. If not, then it should. And if other states don’t have it, then they would greatly benefit from it.
It also seems somewhat fair to me to tax the casinos and other companies profiting from gambling and using that money to fund services for people who become addicted. If you’re going to help create a problem, you should have to help clean it up.
Clinicians aren’t the ones to go to for harms anyways, they’re largely not doing the research at any level.
Here in the Netherlands we had TV advertising for gambling, using semi-celebrities, those were outlawed again within a few months and have not come back. 20-30 years ago, there were a lot of 'call in to win' shows on TV that were of course basically a scam. They too were made illegal and have not returned.
The thing that bothers me the most is that they know a lot of poitential employees have issues with the whole sector, so they try to give it a false veneer of acceptability. A good example of that was that both Paddy Power and Boyle Sports referred to themselves as suppliers of "risk-based entertainment" in their recruitment literature, something I found to be very sleazy.
I also know people who work for some of these companies and they tell me that all their talk about caring for problem gamblers is complete nonsense and that they actively seek ways to lure back problem gamblers who were able to quit.
It's also very weird that as governments around the world are cracking down on alcohol poromotion at the same time they seem to be encouraging the promotion of gambling. I would say gambling can do as much harm to a family as alcohol addiction can. I'm frankly shocked at the amount of gambling adverts there are these days. And so many of them carry the subtle sub-text that if you don't bet on your team then you aren't a true fan.
The problem is that people will gamble no matter what, so providing a safe way to do so is better than banning it. I agree with you that it's all about to what degree you allow gambling. At the very least I would ban advertising as it's effectively normalising something that most definitely should not be normalised.
It's not a choice between prohibition and selling it in the grocery store. There are many nuances in between.
I would also guess that banning an ad is cheaper than banning something like “dancing in public.” One is easy and affects few people or entities directly (basically the companies that want to advertise their sports betting business and those that can host it), while the other is impossible to truly ban because you’d need an army of police or a high tech surveillance state (which probably still cannot institute a full ban).
The US already has plenty of legislation regulating advertisements of other vices, so I think a similar ban is totally appropriate here.
I don't think many other countries' private markets act as extreme in this regard.
>All of which are commercialization
I feel like those are just cultural norms as opposed to commercialization pressure.
> Further, a maximalism interpretation can't be used to understand American culture pre-1974, when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibited banks from preventing women from getting a bank account, nor pre-1964, when the Civil Rights Act prohibited most businesses from preventing blacks from exercising the same commercial maximalism as whites.
I am failing to draw a line from your point to your argument here. I was referring to commercial maximalism, not sexual and racial equality maximalism.
This is a thing physicians say but often don't heed themselves, and I don't think it singles out cannabis in particular.
The thing that horrifies me the most is physicians who smoke. There's an activity of which there is no safe level of doing other than "none", plus they've definitely seen what a smoker's lung looks like, and yet I've seen plenty of doctors who smoke regularly.
It has also been confirmed that heavy use of marijuana has negative effects on cognitive performance and short-term memory even in adults, although these symptoms go away after you stop using.
I think the “all it takes is the right information” model lacks a nuanced understanding of human behavior.
And many jobs involve taking risks. Investment houses. Sales. etc. We reward those who take risks because society (often) benefits.
I find it much easier to argue against standard casino games because it's pretty easy to mathematically prove that the gambler will end up broke. With sports, it's a bit harder. As long as the vig is small enough, smart gamblers who know the teams can eke out a profit. If anything, sports gambling rewards study, thought, and focus, all things we should celebrate. THat doesn't mean I like. I would like to see it banned. But it means I have trouble arguing against it with any vigor.
How well do you know about what happens in other countries? To me it sounds like everywhere, once limitations to the flow of global capital are dropped.
> I feel like those are just cultural norms
My observation is that commercialization pressure is subordinate to cultural norms. The capital vultures did not swoop in to provide full services to women and blacks until the laws changed, even though providing those services was legal.
Commercialization can shape those norms, certainly, but that is not specifically American either.
I think the "all it takes is a government ban" model lacks a nuanced understanding of human behavior. Cannabis is a prime example.
To be clear, I'm not advocating a solution for all of society's ills. I'm advocating a path toward the goals we all share. That path may be longer and more difficult to traverse, but it's my belief that it'll lead us closer to where we want to go.
I think everyone agrees the name should not be damnatio memoriae nor should you be able to link to a click-wrapper, but people will always push the gray area in between as far as they can for that kind of money.
Games of skill with money wagered have always been a significant part of Western European society, starting with the Equestrian Aristocratic classes and funnelling all the way down to the 'Football Pools' and the national pastimes of putting a wager down for the Grand National or Cheltenham festivals, legitimised by social events like Ladies Day or Student Race Week.
There are multiple ways of 'fairer' gambling - exchange markets like Betfair rather than sportsbook being the current epitome. The main issue is lack of legislation around targeting vulnerable demographics and those suffering from addictive traits - and that's an advertising rather than a gambling issue.
24 legalized states, and not one chose this approach which is a shame.
Generally, a law that made it illegal to advertise age-restricted activities to audiences where a significant portion of the audience would be under-age should be a workable solution. Let the courts decide what that gray area of "significant portion" is on a case by case basis.
Nicely put
Pretty well.
> To me it sounds like everywhere, once limitations to the flow of global capital are dropped.
Its a matter of degree, hence "maximalism". Just look at investment capital stats. There is a pretty objective way to confirm that money moves faster and in greater volume into new private industries in the U.S. The only foreign investment arms that come close are multinational conglomerates or authoritarian governments.
> The capital vultures did not swoop in to provide full services to women and blacks until the laws changed, even though providing those services was legal.
...how much profit do you think there was to be made off of people who were previously blocked from capital accumulation?
That just sounds like a hypothesis (ie unfounded conjecture). Meanwhile, the counterclaim at least has a basis in empirical results. We should craft policy based on how people actually behave, not in how we wish they did.
I get that HN skews towards libertarian. My issue is that that the libertarian idea of how people operate is an idealist’s fantasy and not rooted in the real world.
Humans are weak and easy to manipulate, and some more so than others. It seems like the question is always about the degree to which the governments ought to intervene to protect us from each other...and ourselves.
You are raising an interesting question there. I always wondered why in US many things have to be either Yes or Now, Good or Bad, Black or White, Left or Right, Up or Down and so on.
No (or very few) things, opinions or anything in between.
This isn’t a good argument. Cannabis is harmless in adults that it’s harmless in. However, there’s a percentage of the population that has strong, adverse reactions to cannabis. Some of these can be life altering, requiring treatment to correct or mitigate.
The problem with cannabis is you can’t predict if any single person will be susceptible to negative outcomes until they have that negative outcome.
One of the more challenging things with cannabis is it can trigger people who are more predisposed to issues. Some of these things can stick around for a while, after an initial incident. Compared to something, like alcohol, cannabis based issues don’t only affect heavy or long term users. You might just be the unlucky person that cannabis doesn’t jive with.
That being said, I think she largely thinks legal cannabis is good. She’s seen recovered alcoholics who’ve turned to cannabis as their outlet without killing their liver and destroying their body.
However, acting like there are no risks to cannabis is not helping anyone.
I've always found it very striking when the sports team jersey sponsers are betting companies.
And not sure where you sit on this, but for me personally, gambling ads cross a line as gambling has major negative effects to public well-being, especially to those who are the most financially in need.
And even if we look just at under-age audiences, a ban for them make sense, since that for a decent-sized portion of teenage boys, sports is an obsession. Having them pummeled by sports-betting ads at an age when they are often exploring new things is probably not a good idea, as it will make betting (and for some of these, betting addiction) a part of their lives while they are young.
Is it fair to say that's part of American culture then? Very few people are involved in making new private industries, and the regulatory systems don't seem well aligned with the general culture.
> how much profit
How much profit would have been lost if a company was public about supporting blacks and upsetting the white supremacist culture of the time?
That's why I say you can't really disentangle culture and regulation.
> It seems like the question is always about the degree to which the governments ought to intervene to protect us from each other...and ourselves.
Of course. That's why I defined the degree I was advocating for
I think so.
> How much profit would have been lost if a company was public about supporting blacks and upsetting the white supremacist culture of the time?
In the 1970s? No idea. I didn't have a well formed brain until the 2000s.
> That's why I say you can't really disentangle culture and regulation.
Definitely. One depends on the other, and our commercial maximalist culture is reflected in our laws.
It is true that the casinos will find a way to ban people who find an advantage in traditional games like blackjack (think card counting), but that's different. In sports gambling, the profit is extracted with the vig/spread.
I have seen people go into psychosis from weed. & no it wasn't laced. I have seen my gf's dad go from a non-smoker to rolling a blunt every hour. I have had friends drop out of college due to weed.
The curling community is also pretty small, so even though I’m nowhere near pro-level, I overlap with some of them - would be disappointing if I couldn’t watch the events with curlers from my city/country.
In Michigan this is part of the Responsible Gaming program. You can opt out for certain lengths of time and they will not let you back for any reason. It's on a per-casino basis though, not some global list.
You can also get restricted if you ever claim to support that you need the money, have to pay bills, can't wait on the withdraw, etc.
I made a mistake once, while upset at some promo conditions not being clear, that I was "counting" on it. I meant I was counting on using it to gamble more (lmao) but they thought I meant for bills and ended up having to go through a special process to get my account back.
However, unlike anarchy, any harm to human life is very costly (because value of human life is infinite!), for example: killing of someone, suicide, death because of incompetence or laziness, or self damage because of self medication, etc. are «sins» for libertarians.
I hate it though the legalisation, especially since it turns out:it is as bad as they thought it was, no the companies do not do the required addiction checks and yes it ruins people's lives.
That's not an iron-clad argument, as legal gambling can still have mob ties, and tacit permission of some illegal gambling might still permit some level of oversight. And of course, legal gambling doesn't ensure reasonable or effective oversight or regulation.
By establishing known, legal, and possibly even bettor-favourable facilities or systems, gaming becomes something which might have some level of oversight. The increase in online gambling does severely cut into this argument though.
Another challenge, in the U.S., comes in the form of reservation casinos which can operate independently of other state prohibitions on gambling, which means that total eradication is at the very least difficult.
But that is an argument which might be made in answer to your "why not just..." question.
(I'm generally not a fan of gambling in any of its various forms. I'm cognisant of its pervasiveness and some of the worse aspects of it.)
How are gambling sponsorships/ads not a conflict of interest?
Though the pre-2018 situation was that personal (that is, not intermediated by a company) gambling was legal, which provided an out.
Again: I'm positing the argument, I'm not advocating for it. And it does appear to be counterfactual.
With only two choices for everything the country is set up for polarization.
Of course doing it in a way so it can't be tracked keeps the IRS ignorant, which is a big deal to many people
It's bad for the atmosphere too. There are people in the stands ignoring the match in front of them because they're checking bets on other games on their phone.
You know, like wage stagnation in the face of skyrocketing real estate costs.
I agree with your overall point, but this is incorrect. I'm pretty sure there is already a law that says they cannot have fake food in commercials, at least for restaurants. There have been articles explaining how they take a "stock" hamburger (ok, they call it a "sandwich", technically) and dress it up for the commercial. But the interesting part is that the food photographers are constrained to using only ingredients from the store, they cannot use paint or plastic to represent the food. One of the little details I remember was they would use a brush to draw the ketchup to one side of the bun to make it look like it was liberally applied. It's quite interesting how they achieve the final goal - even though it looks NOTHING like the product that is delivered to the consumer.
Guess it's good my luck was terrible in Vegas or I might've inadvertently committed tax fraud. Though now I'm curious if I had won a few hundred dollars would there have been tax due?
I'm pretty sure it's tax free in most countries.
Like any market, those with knowledge and power systematically enrich themselves by extracting wealth from those without.
If sports betting should be banned because it exploits those without wealth or knowledge, then other markets with many naive participants should also be banned, such as markets for stocks and crypto.
I strongly suspect that one element of legalisation is that it normalises the activity, which lowers all sorts of social and psychological barriers to participation.
Another is that it creates self-organised self-interest groups. This is actually a really great way to ensure the longevity of governmental programmes, with both positive and negative examples: welfare systems such as Social Security, Medicare, and the ACA in the US are all immensely popular with the elderly, a staunch voting block, to the extent that its general trend toward conservativism doesn't fully mute interest in social welfare. The military-industrial complex is another, and a recent discussion I'd heard of the Inflation Reduction Act highlighted the constituencies built in to support it even in deep-red southern US states.
In the case of legalisation of gambling, drugs, and sex work, what had previously been the purview of criminal gangs now becomes "ordinary business" (though the thought occurs that the distinction between the two may be less than is commonly understood). To the extent that established businesses prove to be highly effective at defending even the most indefensible of practices (tobacco, alcohol, asbestos, lead, plastics, fossil fuels) is well established, and the risks of that path should be strongly considered.
Another option is to decriminalise rather than legalise a practice, but focus on policing the most problematic elements of the practice. That might be the provider side (as with drugs and gambling) or the consumer side (as with sex work, targeting johns), or on going up-market and tightly limiting or prohibiting private aggregators (e.g., pimps, drug lords) rather than focusing on low-level actors (streetwalkers, individual workers, street crews within drug operations).
State-operated operations (gambling, lotteries, alcohol and tobacco sales, drug distribution *with integrated treatment), is another option, though it too isn't a surefire solution. My view is that lottery programmes in the US are out of control and a net negative, though in part that itself reflects the public-private partnership in the operation of many of these.
Thanks for the correction.
Want to see an image? Follow a link, sir. It is far too distracting to have it simply be there, between the words, enticing us.
And even if there were, how is it any different than being able to buy 80 proof vodka versus 4.5% beer.
I reject any argument for cannabis regulation as long as alcohol is less restricted. I don’t even use cannabis, or ever have. I just know from lots of experience that people high on cannabis have caused me zero problems, compared to an innumerable problems from people high on alcohol.
A data point for you...
I was on a train earlier this year and I was standing behind someone out with their wife/girlfriend. He had his phone in his hand the whole time with a gambling app opened (the green one, PaddyPower maybe?). I couldn't read the screen exactly but there was a list of fixtures for football matches and a button next to each one. From memory, I think each button was odds for the game, e.g. 10:1 Luton win vs Exeter or something.
Anyway, the point is that (again, from memory) at least 8 times in the journey, he opened and closed the app and clicked on 10+ of these odds buttons, while in conversation with his girlfriend who had put her phone away at the start of the journey.
I vaguely recall him checking his balance at one point too.
Anyway, I thought I'd back up your story by telling one of mine where I watched someone place 50+ bets on a 30 min train journey! It's frighteningly easy (emphasis on "frightening")
Edit: This happened a while back and I remember telling this story to people at the time so the numbers may be off but they're in the ballpark!
The idea was to destroy the 'brand value' and positive associations that cigarette companies have worked hard to build.
It does work, but I dont know that the concept would translate to digital media that well.
Investment in equities is principally a non-zero-sum positive EV game motivated by rational expectations for preservation and growth of wealth.
The fact that some financial actors have very good sharpe ratios or dominate capture of trading profits on millisecond horizons isn’t a significant detriment to the larger good resulting from retail investment.
I don't think it'd work well online for similar reasons, the internet is global, it would just disadvantage local companies for no real gain due to our population. It would have to be a concerted global effort. I think there is quite a bit of overlap with accessibility too (simple and quiet is easier to parse for computers and humans than confusing noise), so maybe a push in that direction.
How do you draw the line between someone who wants to gamble recreationally and someone who does it because they are addicted without harming the recreational parties?
The solution to this problem would be mandatory sex worker licenses and mandatory yearly counseling that acts as an escape path for trafficking victims.
There are many women police officers in vice and many means with which to tackle sex trafficking, with or without the testimony of specific victims (bearing in mind that sex trafficking almost always involves many victims).
Yearly contact seems ... sparse... there's more sense to be had in mandatory weekly or fortnightly STI checkups, etc. which incorporates contact with trained medical professionals familiar with the ins and outs of te game.