Every 'vice' industry makes the majority of their profits from the minority who have a problem. Nobody is in business because of the person who puts a quid on the grand national once a year, or celebrates the birth of their baby with a single cigar, or drinks a toast once or twice a year at a wedding. The amount of acceptance society has for these industries depends upon how enjoyably and safely the majority view and interact with the activity, how vocal, visible and impactful the minority struggling with it is and how their problem impacts upon themselves and society. We aren't going to ban alcohol, but we'll tax it more when the streets and hospitals are filled with haemorrhaging incoherent drunks. We aren't going to ban gambling, but we'll intervene when the average punter is suffering from a family breakdown. To not do so just doesn't make any sense to me, we should be rational and pragmatic and seek to protect the vulnerable.
A small number of people due to brain chemistry, upbringing, learnt maladaptive coping mechanisms, temporary or chronic setbacks in life, because their lives are horrible and they have nothing to lose and everything to gain ... whatever will struggle with stuff. They don't want to be completely rubbish at everything, they just have issues. It isn't much good to me to be like ... ha ha you idiot, you should have thought about your horrible hateful brain before you went and screwed it all up. These issues cause problems with their families, their communities and it continues on throughout generations causing misery and harm to the people directly impacted, those around them and society in general. It not only makes sense to go after the root causes of these problems, but is going to be more cost effective in the long run. Condemnation from a position of 'well I'm already jack' does nothing to address the issue except tell the world you are pretty happy with doing alright thanks which should be reward within itself. I'm sure they aren't having more fun than me suffering from a horrific addiction problem.
From my perspective nobody is playing high stakes betting machines for fun or profit. They play them because they have a problem. They target people who have poor impulse control and will either already have, or are developing a gambling problem. Flashing lights, sounds, prompts to keep going and so on, the technology has advanced faster than certainly their brains and it is messing them up. If people are playing them for fun, because they are bored between races, whatever they have come to bet on in the first place then why not limit the bet? They don't need to allow large sums to be wagered to just pass the time. If the cost of some jobs is that others live in misery and cause harm to their loved ones and communities then those jobs are immoral, you might as well stock crack cocaine at the tobacconists. I'll accept something that 80% of people enjoy responsibly and 18% of people do too much and 2% of people are casualties, sadly that is normal to me, but I doubt 80% of people are responsibly enjoying these machines.
Most of the addicts I've met are just bored. They are stuck in a behaviour they know is hurting themselves and their loved ones, but they don't want, or can't change their circumstance and surrounding so continuing onwards with what they know is the path of least resistance. I want to dump on them and wave my willy around about how I'm ok, but it doesn't help anything. Ideally we all have wonderful rich lives filled with reasons to not be addicted to something which ruins our chances of achieving what we want to achieve, but life is often pretty rubbish. We should just aim to make the vices that we have not horrific.
I mean, I'd be fine with buying a litre of grain alcohol at 80% abv for £10. I used to get everclear in the states for less than $10. It'd be handy around the home for a myriad of practical uses, fortifying a cheap fruit punch, fuel for a camping stove that can also be used to sterilise objects and so forth, but it'd turn our communities into a post apocalyptic wasteland. I'd like to be able to purchase better painkillers over the counter because they are bloody handy to have once in a while, but I accept that it'd cause an unacceptable amount of people big problems. I guess I have to feel the same way about high stakes fruit machines, you don't need to ban gambling, but nobody betting hundreds of pounds on those is doing it for fun.
