Do you feel lucky? Do you? Almost everyone’s gambled at some point in his life, laying down money on everything from lottery tickets to Vegas poker tables. The thrill of chasing that elusive jackpot has turned gambling into a multi-billion-dollar industry, but there’s a personal risk that comes with every wager. With nearly 500 casinos currently open for business in the U.S. has legalized gambling gone too far?
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This is not prohibition against betting a dollar that I can pick up the ten pin at the bowling alley. This is prohibition against a form of gambling which can easily lead to addiction and the many proven results: embezzlement, suicide, child and spouse abuse, etc. Why should the government allow and/or sponsor an activity that is so destructive? Do you know of anyone who has commited suicide from paying a penny sales tax? If so, please provide proof.
- jodean August 2, 2008 7:51AM
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This argument suggests because humans have some addictive tendencies, gambling promoters should be unleashed to they can addict all possible victims.
One might not that compulsive shoppers don't generally lose their homes and wind up suicidal or imprisoned from their affliction. Certainly alcohol and other drugs are a problem in this country. Roughly half of all crimes leading to imprisonment in this country are related in some manner to alcohol and other drugs. We have more of our citizens behind bars than any other civilized country – currently about 1 percent of our adult population.
To suggest that what we really need is one more way to destroy peoples’ lives because alcohol, drugs and compulsive behavior has not yet ruined them all is the height (or depth) of cynicism.
- Coalition Against Legalized Gambling July 31, 2008 8:40PM
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"This argument suggests because humans have some addictive tendencies, gambling promoters should be unleashed to they can addict all possible victims"
You're forgetting one important thing here. Who is the "victim?" People choose to gamble, no one forces them to do so. Gambling inherently involves risk, as do so many other things in life. The same goes with alcohol and cigarettes - they are advertised and those ads paint them as fun, great things to do. Still, many people know enough not to drink or smoke, as there are risks!
It comes down to choice and personal responsibility. If you are going to gamble, drink or smoke, or whatever, no one is going to hold a gun to your head and make you do so. Criminalize gambling, however, and you'll quickly find people putting guns to peoples' heads in order to force them not to gamble! It's the old "if you can't save yourself from yourself, I'll do whatever it takes to save you from yourself, even if my doing so hurts you worse than the behavior you originally engaged in." Unfortunately, that's the mindset of many do-gooder Americans. And look at the problems they've wrought.
- PSYOP
September 18, 2008 1:50PM
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Yes, gambling can be addictive but so can alcohol and smoking to an even greater degree. Smoking actually kills – yet it is legal. By the way, how about those people who literally eat their way into their graves. Perhaps then we should make binge eating, excessive drinking and smoking illegal. Should we go back to the days of Prohibition? Obviously that was a failure which had tremendous unforeseen consequences. People should be in control of their own lives. It is true that there are people who have addictive personalities, but more of us do not. Should the many be made to suffer for the disorders of the few?
- redondo July 14, 2008 12:08AM
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The question was "should gambling be legal?" not "should exploitative gambling be legal?"
Gambling should be regulated, not banned.
Furthermore, the stock market is a form of gambling that happens to be extremely addictive for some. But banning that would cause the economy to collapse, so... where do you stand on gambling, really?
- ElaineVigneault September 1, 2008 10:12PM
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No, it Is not gambling , nor is it credit card debt. It's MEDICAL BILLS.
Does that mean we should completely outlaw medicine too? That's another one of those things I think is completely a waste of money, but hey, I don't have to use it, just like I don't have to gamble.
- bagpiper2005 June 10, 2009 12:34PM
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Just something to consider:
"the yearly national health care costs of eating meat are comparable to the estimated $50 billion spent each year to treat illnesses related to smoking."
from: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9B07E1DC1339F932A15752C1A963958260
That's over 10 billion MORE than the costs of gambling. And that's just the health issues. That's not accounting for the environmental damage caused by meat-eating.
The costs to other citizens is worth considering, but if we do it, let's start with the things that cost the public the most, such as meat-eating.
- ElaineVigneault September 7, 2008 11:16AM
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Las Vegas is an entire city in the middle of the desert, that was once nothing, literally BUILT on gambling ! Kind of provides a perfect counter to your argument, don't it?
- richardsonkr June 4, 2009 6:36PM
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You ignore the shades of gray. For example, there's a HUGE difference between lottery tickets and poker tables. For example the odds of winning at poker are higher than winning the lottery. Moreover, casino gambling may be different than gambling on stocks on Wall Street, but the key elements are the same. People get addicted to Wall Street, there are both costs and benefits to society from Wall Street, and suicide? Well read about how legal Wall Street gambling is increasing suicides here:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080804/ehrenreich
- ElaineVigneault September 7, 2008 11:26AM
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Fortunately, this is a free country, and not a theocracy. We don't make laws based on morality. We make them based on the Constitution and the will of the People. It's why we've dropped other obsolete laws based on morality like anti-sodomy laws. It's time for this oppressive and arbitrary ban to go the way of the dodo as well.
- richardsonkr June 4, 2009 6:47PM
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Every day Sol prays, "God, please let me win the lottery." This is his prayer every day for years. Finally God opens the clouds to reply,
"Sol," God says, "Meet me halfway, buy a ticket!"
There are no atheists playing slot machines. Each player truly believes that God has a great destiny designed for them, and the machine is a vehicle for deliverance. My evidence for this argument is the high incidence of smoking in casinos , especially at the slots. (Casinos which must honor a smoking ban experience a marked drop in business.) Smoking is an affirmation that one enjoys a special relationship with our Deity.
All of us live with the specter of our uncertain live span. In return we are given a sure and certain knowledge that God loves us. He will intervene in our daily tribulations just when we need it most. Like the Roman soldier who eased Jesus's suffering with a well placed spear, we believe that God will end our suffering with a well-timed big score.
Banning gambling is the moral equivalent banning religion . I look forward to your outraged response.
- Stark Raving Sane June 4, 2009 9:31PM
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All of the things you described had a definite victim. With gambling , everyone who goes into the casino knows exactly what they're getting into. They aren't being forced or duped into gambling, they go all by themselves, fully aware of the risks, usually realizing that they are going to lose money . There is no victim here.
- richardsonkr June 4, 2009 6:40PM
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Should Gambling be Legal?
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Praise the Predators?
The timely question is not about person to person poker games or office pools. The timely question is should government allow, promote and profit from an activity that injures its citizens. Most state governments now either promote, profit from or manage gambling on a huge scale or collude with predator corporations in victimizing their citizens. The governments have moved from being a protector of its citizens to becomming a predator. Enjoy your card game...but fight the predators.
- Guy Clark July 2, 2008 12:14PM
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prohibition leads to serious consequences
Why should governments prohibit gambling? Let me start by saying that just like in the prohibition era, gambling happens. Is powerball legal? Is it technically gambling? How can people be so ardently against legalizing a pasttime that literally encompasses the American dream. What would March madness be without the bracket challenges or the super bowl without the spread? Seems like the real question is should there be casinos ala the bizarro 1985 in Back to the Future II. And the answer to that reverberates a negative response. There is a reason there is only one Vegas. At the same time, a government that profits from lotteries cannot possibly have a leg to stand on in this issue.
- Sundevil
July 13, 2008 7:03PM
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FREE COUNTRY! What about that do you not understand?
I know we have too many people in this country that feel if you are not like them there is something wrong with you. They will not rest until you are won over to there life style they want everything and everyone to be the same like them!! I love diversity all the different kinds of people we have in this great country! I am Cherokee I believe in live and let live if a grown man wants to gamble he will gamble whether you make it legal on not. Like so many things in our FREE COUNTRY you tell us we cannot do, we say F you I am an American. Join the fight to win back our rights as Americans wake up read use your brain do not listen to the lies from every direction!! Research The War on Drugs, PACS, GEO corp., Blackwater, how do you spend 10 billon a month to support 160,000 underpaid troops, why are we 9 trillion in debt and where our represenatitives spent it. I could go on but this should get you started! You cannot tell an American he cannot gamble it dosen't work!
- Cherokee Fred hussein August 5, 2008 1:34AM
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The Issue is Fundamental ...
All you really decide is this: Do you solely own your personal life or does someone else? Do you possess sole ownership of you? If you own your life, then you have the undeniable right to live by your own judgment - assuming you allow others the same respect. Whether or not you gamble will be your decision and your decision alone - assuming gambling is made available to you in a free and open marketplace. Sole ownership of your own life means both the right to your own successes and the right to your own failures. If you do NOT own your life, as easily as gambling can be denied you, it can be made compulsory under the same argument. When the state partially or wholly has ownership of you, the state possesses both the right and responsibility for your successes and failures. Personal and private property is gone. The state will decide what you may earn, what you must spend, what you must throw away, what you must keep.
Are you so eager to create, live in and be subject to a police state? Are you so eager to hand over ownership of you to others? Always assuming you have respect for and grant equal liberty to exercise individual rights to others, don't you have the right to earn and spend your money as you see fit? Do you believe in personal and private property rights or not?
If you argue for state ownership or, as it happens, dictatorship of the majority, i.e., the outlaw of or government regulation of monetary gaming, you'll quite likely get all that you've asked for ... and then some.
- Naumadd
September 7, 2008 3:24AM
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If we open it up for all
I have lived in Las Vegas and when I was there I saw less poverty than I( see now in San Diego. I think any city should be allowed to have gambling. I do have a problem with the Indian gaming laws. Why should they be the only ones to have gaming? The US should stop kiss the Indian's butt. We gave them welfare for years and now they are the only ones to profit from gaming in Calif. and many other states. Open it up for others to open casinos. Crime is already here. And Las Vegas doesn't anymore crime than any other large city of the same size. And by the way, The Mormon's own much of the land being used for gaming in Vegas.
- purelabor
October 1, 2008 1:02PM
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If you can afford it, go for it
Personally, I think it's a ridiculous waste of money. However, this is a free country. People can spend their hard-earned cash on whatever they want, I don't really care, so knock yourself out. Gambling isn't for me, however.
- bagpiper2005
October 19, 2008 12:39PM
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It's like a DRUG
Gambling means Gambling...
Money
Cars
FAMILY!
And it's very addictive. Like a drug.
If not out of control, fine.But, like I said, IT'S ADDICTIVE.Marketing:ADDICTIVE. If you win,it makes you happy, so you try it over and over, Like a drug.Only gamble in modderation.But sadly, few do now a-days.
- Kawaii
December 15, 2008 4:41PM
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Well
I'm a Communist, so I'm against financial gambling.
- Blue Linchpin
December 18, 2008 8:53PM
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Justification
What's the communist rationale behind banning gambling? If two parties agree to something, what's the big deal?
- F2XL
December 19, 2008 9:43PM
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Don't ban casinos
There isn't one, because I'm not in favor of banning casinos.
In fact, I'm not in favor of banning anything. What I am in favor of is a popular movement to simply reject currency and an economy based on gambling through stocks and 'risk'. I find there's no reason for one person to have a longer lifespan because they got lucky in a stocks gamble, while another has a shorter lifespan due to less healthcare and a lower standard of living simply because they either didn't succeed at the gamble or weren't stupid/greedy/rich enough to make the gamble in the first place.
- Blue Linchpin
December 20, 2008 9:17PM
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I guess I agree with you on gambling
If you're in favor of something other than banning any casinos then I guess we have no disagreement here.
- F2XL
December 20, 2008 11:26PM
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Nice Google Ads...
... does anyone else find it funny that the ads on the Expert Debate page are from casinos? I thought that was great!
- SocialistBetty
January 27, 2009 12:32AM
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Don't really see why it is such a problem...or question.
Another example of the government sticking their noses into something it shouldn't be. This is a topic that the citizens need to handle. But then again, all those do gooders out there trying to tell me what is best for me and my family. Sorry, I dont need anyone telling me what I should or should not spend my money on. Quit trying to protect me from myself, I am capable of that myself.
I am not a big gambler but I get the urge two or three times a year to go play some Blackjack. What is wrong with that? At least I am not out there telling people what they should or should not do, mind your own business. Me playing blackjack and losing a couple hundred bucks is of no concern to anyone.
- rkm
June 4, 2009 3:10PM
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What?
What are we trying to do? Give our citizens so little choices and options we turn into a China?
- Dylandts
August 12, 2009 7:28PM
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Most people gamble anyways
It doesn't matter to me if it's legal . It has a few places in america where it is legal. I guess I'm lucky living close to one of the areas. Even when it's not legal we have "friendly" bets on all sorts of things the Pay-per-view fights, football, how far you can run, if you can drink a 30 case to yourself etc. If it was legal it would lower everyones taxes a bit. Cause you could tax the winnings.
Again either way I'm fine with it.
- ttut21
August 13, 2009 12:37PM
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