This would be true if wine was deliberately made worse quality in order to maximize some incentive behind manipulating alcoholics. I don't have a horse in this race, but this comparison misses the entire point of this particular counter to sports gambling. The sports in question are, purportedly, made worse - the outcome changed in arbitrary ways disconnected from the spirit of nature of the sport - in order to maximize the profits of the incredibly wealthy. There is no way to escape this when enjoying the sport; if deliberately throwing is rampant, you would always have to ask if a player's mistake was genuine, and your emotional investment in a game is poisoned as a result. Likewise, the comparison would be that no wine is immune from this kind of quality reduction. Eventually, a wine drinker will drink wine which has been reduced in quality on purpose.
Your analogy is an improvement, but both of you are weirdly mapping "alcoholics" to "people who are interested in gambling". A valid analogy would speak of people who are interested in alcohol.
(Incidentally, the restaurant in your analogy would probably not be viable without that bar!)
>A valid analogy would speak of people who are interested in alcohol.
I did speak of people who enjoy wine (that contains alcohol) and don't have an alcohol problem. Their enjoyment of wine is not ruined by winos on the curb drinking out of paper bags.
Your off hand comment about spits and slurs makes me realize people all consume alcohol very differently. I feel like anytime there is a conversation around alcohol, dose needs to be stated. Obviously it's going to be hard to have deep conversations with someone who has had 12 beers, but someone who has had a drink or two, lowering their inhibitions, will likely open up more.
I sing a lot and my choir friends can do karaoke sober, but they are the only people I know who can sing in public with no social lubricant. Citing karaoke as a sober activity was very odd to me.
