My fear is that there's no great way to outlaw predatory casinos that pick the pockets of the poor, that still allows responsible home games and private clubs. A lot of US states try/tried various ways, with rules about who can take a rake and so on, but it's difficult to make them ironclad and casinos are highly motivated to find loopholes and operate a millimeter from the edge of the law. And if you get too strict, suddenly you've criminalized grandma's $0.25 bingo game with the ladies.
Maybe go see a movie instead.
We are seeing similar with sports betting and marijuana in the US. Less than ten years ago, these were major crimes basically everywhere. Now, in large swaths of the country, you can't drive a mile without seeing a billboard for one or the other. Making them illegal again is not the answer, but we don't seem to have a standard way of shading things like this in any meaningful way.
(By the way, I'm not against people smoking a little weed or betting on football, but plenty of people do get momentum with both and it can have harmful effects for them. I believe the industries pushing both behaviors are in large part profiting off this small group of heavy "users". )
Why is this an argument? So push it underground. As a rule, old folks aren't going to take their pensions to Fast Freddy's strip club backroom poker nights. People think that because a law doesn't work 100 percent, it shouldn't exist.
Banning subsidized travel to casino’s alone would go quite far. Similarly banning slot machines from having sound, flashing lights, animations etc would reduce though obviously not eliminate the draw.
Trivially so. People with gambling addictions don't wind up as old folks with pensions.
True
But we can regulate it
We can limit the damage