The Case for Regulating Online Gambling
It has spread without guardrails in an age of engineered addiction
“They fatten upon wretchedness, and have the effrontery to demand that the laws of the State shall be adapted to their purposes.” So said Charles Evans Hughes, Republican governor of New York and eventual Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, about Empire State gambling operators in 1908.
More than a century later, Hughes’s words ring true as the United States faces an explosion of legal online gambling. Sports betting, decriminalized by the Supreme Court in 2018, has spread to 39 states. Online casinos, which include slots, blackjack, and more, are permitted in seven. Americans now gamble roughly $1 billion a day on state-sanctioned apps like DraftKings and FanDuel—far more if one includes the lottery and meme-stock or crypto speculation.
Many have championed this newfound embrace of financial thrill-seeking. According to The Economist, America’s “gambling boom should be celebrated as an expansion of people’s freedom to lead their lives as they choose.” Bill Miller, president of the American Gaming Association, the gambling industry’s main lobbying group, wrote last year that online sports betting is a “vibrant and responsible industry that prioritizes consumer protections” and is “generat[ing] significant economic benefits.” According to Miller, gambling is innocuous, “a voluntary entertainment option, comparable to attending a concert, dining out, or going to the movies.”
But gambling is not like attending a concert or going to the movies. Read the rest at City Journal