Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Huge Mistake
Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Huge Mistake
The evidence is convincing: The betting industry is ruining lives.
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I don't gamble and am actively repulsed by how it's being pushed as hip and cool. That said, I'm surprised by the hardline abolition stances in here. Drugs (including alcohol) are surely far more corrosive to people's wellbeing, but no one on here is arguing for prohibition, right?
in a true utopian vision there would be little to no want for any of these things. I agree drug prohibition sucks but prohibition of drugs is different to prohibition of gambling. it's hard to stop people making bathtub moonshine. gambling prohibition is harm reduction if done right because a small wager between friends is relatively harmless + ideally in socialism or whatever your buddy won't be set up to take 10 grand bets off you and all your friends on the game. I'm largely a drug liberationist too but you need some control or at least oversight + intervention mechanisms. and I still believe in a utopian vision where all those vices will be more or less transcended. in end stage communism there will not be liquor stores where you can buy 2 litres of vodka at 4am, that's harmful. I'm an alcoholic so maybe I do have contradictory views on this but I just deeply believe it's a societal ill same as gambling. other drugs it's more of a case by case basis. largely they are still bad, this is a lesson the left should have learned since the 1960s. but again in communism ideally people aren't feeling the need to get strung out on heroin that shit is a palliative for living in capitalism. so when it comes to drugs it's more of a utopian transcending the thing but gambling could be effectively tamped down under socialism. even under capitalism it's probs better if it's outlawed tbh. sorry it's unstructured and probably repeated myself just typed my thoughts up very fast.
No your perspective is really helpful actually. Definitely agree on both being societal ills. I've just started working around a bunch of people going through really hard times w/ drugs and have my own unresolved childhood trauma related to it, so this has been slowly creeping up on me for the past couple months.
I just see the harm it causes people everyday and then people seem to just kinda dismiss it as unimportant versus gambling. That's an uncharitable representation of that opinion but it's the way it came across to me.
The opioid epidemic has made a lot of people, myself included, skeptical of anti-prohibition. Turns out pushing something underground often does have the effect of making it more expensive and inconvenient to access. There some study I can't find now, but it claimed legalizing prostitution actually increased human trafficking because now traffickers could mask their operations as legal sex work opening them up to new clientele they normally wouldn't have access to. I suspect there's a lot of men who would be going to brothels regularly if it was as easy as going to 7/11 but don't want to go to the bad side of town to pick up a sex workers who could be a cop doing a sting.
Same with drugs, going from a system where you had to import raw opium from Afghanistan or wherever to the west via camel and make shift submarine, then process and distribute it clandestinely, made being a heroin addict and expensive pain in the ass. Now you can buy pills made semi-legally in a factory in Mexico that some guy got prescribed to him by a shady Floridian doctor for a broken ankle he had 10 years ago.
Prohibition didn't work for weed and booze cuz both of those are things easy to make and distribute even when they're illegal, plus they're both easier to consume, and even abuse, while being a functional member do society. I think there are vices thought where you could reduce the consumption and abuse of just by making it a big fucking pain in the ass to get access to and gambling I think is one of them.
There some study I can't find now, but it claimed legalizing prostitution actually increased human trafficking because now traffickers could mask their operations as legal sex work opening them up to new clientele they normally wouldn't have access to.
That's interesting—on the other hand, I know of one case where the shuttering of a sex work website due to human trafficking charges (which Kamala Harris lead the charge on, as it happens) actually made a lot of sex workers feel less safe. Article here.
It's not quite the same concept, but thought it was worth mentioning.
And yeah I think making gambling less accessible and less visible is good. But then, shouldn't we also do the same for alcohol and drugs, just up to the point where it's still easier to get them legally than illegally?
But then, shouldn't we also do the same for alcohol and drugs
Thing is we kind of already do. There's a ton of regulations regarding the sale and advertisement of alcohol and tobacco, many of which are the product of activism by anti-smoking and temperance movements.
Idk how I feel about gambling personally, but you don't really have to take a hardline prohibitionist or libertarian stance on these things. I suppose one could make the argument that adults should have the right to gamble responsibly, but like you can also think regulations against problem gambling are good.
Edit: also...
on the other hand, I know of one case where the shuttering of a sex work website due to human trafficking charges (which Kamala Harris lead the charge on, as it happens) actually made a lot of sex workers feel less safe.
So I don't really have time right now to delve deep into that article, but I kind of suspect they were interviewing adult, independent sex workers who are in the profession mostly voluntarily. Not that their experience and concerns aren't valid but I do feel like I see a lot of pro-legalization arguments coming from that crowd and I think it's worth considering their experiences as sex workers is nothing like most women in the industry. They're independent and working in a lucrative industry on their own terms, often in semi-legal niches often for wealthier clientele. I think some people in that world fail to realize legalizing full service prostitution is essentially opening the doors for it to be industrialized which like likely lead to what is essentially sex-trafficking-in-all-but-name.
I suppose one could make the argument that adults should have the right to gamble responsibly, but like you can also think regulations against problem gambling are good.
That's largely where I'm at, I was just surprised by how hardline people are regarding it on here.
On the article there are some people like you mention ("Jenny, a sex worker who also runs a nude housework business in Seattle") but also the first person they mention is someone who turned to sex work after getting kicked out of their parent's house at 18. And later there's this:
Pike Long, the deputy director of St. James Infirmary, a health and safety clinic for sex workers in the city, told me the clinic estimates the number of sex workers now doing street work in San Francisco alone has tripled since Craigslist’s personals section and BackPage went offline.
I"m not super educated on sex work but I"m assuming street work is going to be much more dangerous than the web stuff
I respect that! At least it's consistent
only idealists scream for consistency in everything. embrace living in contradictions and struggling with them
I'm averse to gray areas and inconsistency to a fault, so maybe that's part of why I feel so differently here.
For me there should be no abolition, but what has happened is a few predatory companies given free rein to exploit vulnerable people. There were offshore bookies and stuff before, but the level of exploitation (through advertising on mainstream sports networks, not to mention online ads) is unreal and definitely created this problem.
And it's crazy how it all sprang up like mushrooms too. Banning ads like they did with cigarettes would help but the cat is already somewhat out of the bag for people who have gotten hooked
And the sheer money in favor of keeping it legalized. It would be difficult to overturn
I think dangerous drugs should be prohibited.
You think drugs should just be freely available to the public? All of them? You wouldn't prohibit meth? Heroin? Cocaine?
Are we talking about prohibition or restriction? I fully support restrictions on dangerous drugs, but hasn't it been consistently shown that outlawing vices entirely doesn't stop their consumption and just makes it more dangerous (especially for poor people)?
If we're basing this off danger, then alcohol is the much more immediate concern given how easily available and culturally accepted it is while still being quite bad for you
outlawing vices entirely doesn't stop their consumption and just makes it more dangerous (especially for poor people)?
We're in a thread about how legalizing sports betting is driving poor people further into poverty. The idea that legalization is inherently harm reduction is completely divorced from reality.
i agree its a total false equivalence here drugs and gambling are in fact different and one is a lot easier to stop people doing in harmful ways
You think drugs should just be freely available to the public?
I do. A lot of the danger of drugs is mitigated by quality control and education.
In the United States we have an opioid epidemic fueled by quality controlled, regulated drugs given out by medical professionals in spite of generally widespread knowledge that opioids are dangerous and addictive.
I think that a lot of people say stuff like what you're claiming, but I don't really buy it.
it's the same thing as prison abolition where secretly it's not really that. I consider myself a drug liberationist but you can't just let people kill themselves with heroin or take antibiotics whenever. there would still need to be mechanisms of control oversight and intervention. ultimately the goal is to transcend the need for these vices of course.
Why are opioids dangerous? And why do people get addictes? Its not because of their availability
Aside from causing permanent brain damage?
Because they impair your judgement and kill you if you take too much which you could easily do do if your judgement is impaired?
Also, yes it fucking is because of the availability. The reason it became a massive epidemic is that every other doctor in the country became a drug dealer for dangerous recreational drugs.
you take too much
See my previous comment
Also, yes it fucking is because of the availability. The reason it became a massive epidemic is that every other doctor in the country became a drug dealer for dangerous recreational drugs.
And why were they doing this? Because the drugs were available or because it was profitable?
See my previous comment
I don't follow. Are you saying that if people understand the dangers of overdosing they'll quit doing it? Because if so I think you're ignoring the impaired judgement.
And why were they doing this? Because the drugs were available or because it was profitable?
The drugs are available because they're profitable. Giving them to anyone who asks for free won't make them safer.
They did it because people came to them and asked for it. Making them over the counter would make this vastly vastly worse in every way.
this is deeply naive. also idk how many doctors you have dealt with but they are not known for doing things because the patient asked for them
Fentanyl and OxyContin seem to suggest otherwise