zlacker

This might sound crazy but I know what you mean. I hate gambling. I never found it fun, and if I’m honest, I genuinely found most of them contemptible. I was very young and much less understanding. I’m just good at games and found one I could make really good money at. I never played slots or pai gow or much else unless I had an edge on the casino, and that’s rare and usually just because of a promotion.

I’ve seen first hand people throw their lives away for it, just like they do with drugs or alcohol. Addiction has familiar patterns regardless of the particular vice, and the answer is better mental health facilities, not criminalization.

All giving an addict a rap sheet does is make it harder for them to get a job.

Illegal gambling is an interesting underworld. You’ll be at the same table with drug addicts, local politicians (even police sometimes), successful businessmen, and everything else you can imagine.

It’s less in-your-face harmful than fentanyl but the processes they go through are similar.

I think legalizing gambling gets rid of a lot of problems, but of course, causes problems too. But just because legalizing it led to an upsurge in sports betting doesn’t mean the best option is to make it illegal again.

Cigarettes are the model to me for vices. It’s the best public health win I’ve lived to see. Instead of making them illegal, we made them expensive and uncouth. We made cigarette companies fund campaigns to get people off cigarettes, to huge effect.

That’s what I believe we should do for gambling. Legalizing it was not a mistake, and looking at the picture shortly after and deciding it was is short sighted.