Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society

> Your opinion seems to be...

I'd be impressed if you can link that back to something I said, I don't think my opinion is that at all. I haven't said anything about poor people, for example.

If someone has enough money that wasting it on gambling is a problem, then they clearly had no business giving up hope because "the system" doesn't have the ability to make their lives better. The system that makes their lives better is the money they just wasted, but invested in something productive.

Someone can't claim to be hopeless about the potential to improve their material comfort when the means to do so was just sitting in their bank account. They have money spare - start spending it to make life better.

I'm happy to accept that gamblers are irrational, but their problem isn't that the system is causing them to give up hope, their problem is that they are irrational gamblers. Sucks to be them, but it isn't anything to do with systemic external factors beyond casino advertising which is quite a specific thing and nothing to do with general hopefulness. Or the quite likely reality that they don't know what opportunity looks like despite it being right in front of them.

From the wiki page, Christianity from the bible's perspective doesn't have a problem with gambling itself:

> Although the bible does not condemn gambling, instead the desire to get rich is called to account numerous times in the New Testament.

And the Catholic's problem with it is the competition:

> Some parish pastors have also opposed casinos for the additional reason that they would take customers away from church bingo and annual festivals where games such as blackjack, roulette, craps, and poker are used for fundraising.

Generally, I take a realist perspective on this. The line is wherever the people who wield power want it to be given their understanding of their self-interest. Any talk of "should" is a rhetorical exercise to convince people that it's in their self-interest to join you and oppose the thing.

A college fund your parents saved for you isn't your money unless the money is in your name (or possibly set up correctly at the bank). If they just save it in their name, they can spend away as they like. It is their money until it is actually in your name even if you were told it was there as a child.

Which is understandable in many cases if the family actually needs the money before someone goes to college.

Gambling companies have engineered sophisticated addiction machines that exploit the brain's weaknesses, so it's very different to most of the other things you listed. They also deliberately prey on the people most susceptible to getting addicted, and even engage in extremely predatory behaviour like giving high-risk targets all sorts of "free" perks and benefits in order to keep them gambling for as long and much as possible. I can't find it now, but a few months ago on HN was an article about one of these systems, where the gambler got a dedicated "advisor" that was giving them things like free rolls, free tokens to gamble with, free alcohol and even accomodations, all because they know the addicts will keep gambling and use their own money inevitably. They then ban people who are gambling too "smartly" or even just on lucky win streaks from participating in their "games".

Smoking is a great example and an almost 1:1 parallel to what's happening with gambling, they had teams of people and even paid off scientists to fabricate studies about the health benefits of smoking, and then used deceptive marketing that was very carefully crafted to ensure people tried it out, and the product itself is just inherently addictive. They ensured they can capture the next generation by specifically tailoring their adverts towards children and getting them curious to try tobacco.

As a result most of the world has banned tobacco advertising, and a lot of places are doing things like enforcing ugly generic packaging with extreme health issues plastered on the boxes, exorbitant prices & taxes on tobacco because of what Big Tobacco did.

Gambling should be treated the exact same as tobacco is and was. Advertising it should never be allowed in any context whatsoever, and the gambling spots and apps should have disclaimers all over the place indicating the dangers of it. Additionally, the actual companies should be heavily regulated to not be allowed to offer "perks" and to also not be allowed to pick who can play or not.

Gambling, like most things, is simply something that will always be a thing, so just like tobacco and alcohol it shouldn't be banned outright. That doesn't mean we need to let predatory practices proliferate. Nothing is stopping us from making gambling as unattractive as we reasonably can, both for the gamblers and the gambling companies. There will still be gambling, but just like tobacco there will be a lot less people doing it, and at that point the ones that are are at least as protected and informed as possible.