I believe that sports betting should be legal, and for context I do a little bit but in the few hundreds of dollars a year total range.
When I weigh the legality of things in the harms-vs-freedoms sort of way that you're describing, I tend to use alcohol as my point of comparison, since that's probably the most harmful behavior we allow.
So is sports betting less harmful than alcoholism? If you look at it from the perspective of the cost to society (which I think it should), it seems pretty clearly to me to be correct. The dollar cost to the consumer is less (remember when comparing numbers that the headline for gambling is the amount wagered, of which only a minority is actually lost, vs. for alcohol it's what's spent, which is all lost). Add to that the amount we have to spend on Medicare/Medicaid treatment for issues caused by alcohol, and in my view it's very tough to say that it's reasonable for alcohol to be legal but sports betting should not.
> On the other hand, I think weed and alcohol should be legal, despite it affecting people's lives in negative ways, but the majority if their users are completely normal people.
I do want to address this point - I don't think the majority of their users being normal is a good metric. There are an estimated two million people in AA, and those are just the ones for whom drinking has become a problem so serious that they felt the need to seek help. The consequences for those people are absolutely devastating.
When I weigh the legality of things in the harms-vs-freedoms sort of way that you're describing, I tend to use alcohol as my point of comparison, since that's probably the most harmful behavior we allow.
So is sports betting less harmful than alcoholism? If you look at it from the perspective of the cost to society (which I think it should), it seems pretty clearly to me to be correct. The dollar cost to the consumer is less (remember when comparing numbers that the headline for gambling is the amount wagered, of which only a minority is actually lost, vs. for alcohol it's what's spent, which is all lost). Add to that the amount we have to spend on Medicare/Medicaid treatment for issues caused by alcohol, and in my view it's very tough to say that it's reasonable for alcohol to be legal but sports betting should not.
> On the other hand, I think weed and alcohol should be legal, despite it affecting people's lives in negative ways, but the majority if their users are completely normal people.
I do want to address this point - I don't think the majority of their users being normal is a good metric. There are an estimated two million people in AA, and those are just the ones for whom drinking has become a problem so serious that they felt the need to seek help. The consequences for those people are absolutely devastating.