Just like all prohibitions, if you take away access to X, people will just find other (often illegal/dangerous) ways to do X. We can make gambling less convenient and push it back into the backroom poker rooms and illegal bookies who break peoples' legs, but it would be more effective to solve the problems of despair, desperation and hopelessness that are driving people to gambling in the first place. That's a lot harder, so here we are talking about bans.

Gambling addiction has always existed but making it where you have to physically show up somewhere to do it is actually a highly effective deterrent vs. being able to click a button on your phone and get an app for it.

There is data from the past 10 years showing a direct spike in bankruptcies, divorces, foreclosures, suicide, and domestic violence (yes, really) as soon as DraftKings-style gambling is legalized in a state.

> despair, desperation and hopelessness

These are certainly factors, and yes we should have better mental health treatment and job opportunities in the US, etc.

But it's an incomplete picture of what's happening. There are billion-dollar companies with teams of advanced psychologists crafting the most addictive experience possible, and specifically targeting problem gamblers, with these new apps. It's industrialized and predatory. People with happy fulfilling lives and careers are still falling for it, not just hopeless impoverished people. Saying it's only about mental health and despair is framing it as an individual failing and ignoring the huge industry creating it this way.

The apps and the companies behind them really brought in a dangerous paradigm shift and the data is already here to show it.

Should we let minors buy cigarettes?

Legalize murder so people aren't forced to do it in the backrooms. Think of the murderers, they'll get their legs broken otherwise!