That's like saying that the only harm of a drug war is to the street dealers. All things being equal, I'd rather not live in a town where organized groups of people have a strong profit motive to pop their competition off.
I won't deny that underground gambling has all sorts of collateral damage, I just don't think that Disney causes far more collateral damage than these criminals ever did just in a non-violent way. They're less thuggish, more Bernie Madoff in their effects on society.
I sincerely and strongly believe legal gambling causes far more harm than criminals ever did. The reason gambling gets legalised is not because legalised gambling reduces harm. It's because legalised gambling can balance the books for some politician before the next election, because they can sell it as being "pro-fun", because gamblers themselves will vote for them, and because the harms are abstract, diffuse, and blamed on the gamblers themselves.
One of the oldest debates in government imho... yes, vices are bad. Yes, they're also human nature. Yes, prohibition is problematic, yes, decriminalization also has tradeoffs. There aren't any "correct" positions on these. It's just a game of moving around the harms.
We have seen immense harm from legal gambling in the UK since it was liberalised some years ago, far more than any illegal gambling ever caused in the UK. Whether that is also true of the US I can't say but I suspect that it is true to some extent.
Illegal gambling was not a big problem in the UK. A lot of the harm from gambling does not hinge on legality. It hinges on the suppliers manipulation of human psychology to induce people to continue to gamble well beyond their means resulting in people stealing from employers and family and committing suicide.
"Fifteen years on from the dawn of the Gambling Act 2005, and the landscape has changed beyond recognition. A casino can now be accessed from your pocket 24/7 and half of UK adults gamble at least once a month. But hiding in plain sight is a world of regret, exploitation and shattered lives underpinning an industry that claims to be ‘just a bit of fun’ generating £14bn in profit.
The House of Lords Gambling Industry Select Committee estimate that 60 per cent of online gambling profits come from the 5 per cent of customers experiencing gambling problems, with estimates of disordered gambling rates ranging from 340,000 to 1.4 million. The industry’s practices create disordered gamblers and then exploit them. The harm caused goes far beyond financial losses. It is estimated by Gambling with Lives that there are between 250 and 650 gambling related suicides every year."
