Is gambling really a social evil and what are the approaches to it ?

I am a part time gambler myself and I have studied many aspects of it, including the subject of addiction.

I believe in your organization you are serious workers.

I ‘d like to raise some issues and please forgive me because addiction is only one of those issues and not “the issue”. If you expect only downright condemnations, this write up of mine will not be one such.

First of all it is a universal truth that gambling in its various forms gets the stick because it is an economic activity that doesn’t fall in line with the principle of the “streamlined economy”, to which all modern societies more or less adhere (and not only the communist ones).

I do this for my private gain, I don’t produce gadgets-appliances for your homes, I don’t provide jobs.

So the powers that be frown upon me.

Whether I ‘m addicted or not, lose money or not is unimportant but it is invoked as an easy excuse to bring about the various prohibitionist legislations we know of.

I ‘m an enemy of addiction and I most certainly don’t like it when people not properly guided to avoid it, but nevertheless what I just said above is the truth.

For are there not so many other things that cause damage to people ?

I ‘m going to name stock exchange crashes, the breaking down of personal relations, bad decisions in matters of commerce and finance.

Those are some human activities that are never mentioned in this context, but just the same occur on a daily basis and can hurt.

Since I started with gambling addiction let me explain what my findings about it are:

1) Schools do not teach the young persons properly. Sometimes they tell them “don’t do this or fire will come upon you from the sky and burn you”. Nothing about the mechanisms and about the mathematics involved (for it all comes down to mathematics, no matter what sort of game of chance it is).

2) The state authorities play hide and seek. They talk of clinics for the gravely sick but do nothing about prevention (as explained in (1)).

3) The people who are most vulnerable are the age group 25-35, because this is the time most people start work for the first time and make their own money.

4) The new recruits to all types of game of chance at some point or another suffer some huge loss.

5) The percentage of very sick people is not as big as touted to be but around 1-2%.

However, given the above, it is a restriction of personal freedom to make gambling illegal or introduce such extreme tax laws that make life impossible.

Sometimes gambling is an opportunity for me to make some money and I consider those who deny it from me as thieving dictators.

I want to be protected by those thieving dictators before anything else.

The state authorities in the various nations of Europe, maintain a very strong propaganda network and have become experts in the dissemination of lies.

Here are some:

a) Private casino operators cheat, state operators do not. This is meant to enforce into the minds of the very gullible that the negative probability of the casino is because of the “private operators who are cheating”, whilst the state-run casinos are places where they can win money.

b) Bet tax, abnormal take off percentages are meant to save people from addiction.

c) State casinos are built to make the nation economy healthy and people should visit them.

On certain hours of the day, they advertise to suck the weak minded, on other hours they broadcast these things.

Those are lies and if told by a scientist of medical psychology they are also criminal offenses.

Here is what I ‘d like to see in a democratic state:

i) Protection of the gambler against excessive take off percentages

ii) Protection of the gambler when bookmakers arbitrarily do not honour bets.

iii) Fight against corruption in sport.

iv) Lessons in school against gambling addiction.

That is more or less the application of the same rules as for the stock exchanges.

What I ‘d like to see from organizations like “Gamcare” is to have a policy for everything connected with gambling, because in the modern world most people are seeing it as a legitimate economic activity and

not as the petty sin it was in Edwardian times.

If those organizations were to advocate total and without exceptions prohibition, it might find me in strong disagreement but as this is a honest point of view, they are entitled to it. What is happening is that some of their experts or maybe so-called experts become parts of the propaganda mechanism as described above.

(name-address-occupation available if the forum allows)