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Promotion of gambling should be likened to promotion of cigarettes. It should be illegal to advertise gambling, but I don't think it should be outlawed to gambl

Promotion of gambling should be likened to promotion of cigarettes. It should be illegal to advertise gambling, but I don't think it should be outlawed to gamble. People should be able to choose how they live their lives, but we should do all that we can to prevent mass manipulation through adverts in industries that are known to be harmful. I also think that alcohol and e-cig advertising should be outlawed as well.

shipman05 5y ago
This has been my position for a while on so called "vices". Prohibition is ineffective and often does more harm than good, but allowing companies to advertise these products to young people and those who are susceptible to abuse is a net negative for society. Worst of all are government run lotteries. A state run lottery may be preferable to one run by organized crime, but running millions of dollars worth of ads with product tie-ins (Harley Davidson, car companies, cruises, etc.) all while claiming to "support education" is outrageous.
- PKop 5y ago
  >Prohibition is ineffective and often does more harm than good I don't believe this is true, though it is often parroted as so. Effectiveness of prohibition is determined in large part on severity of punishments. It is imperfect, and will always be. But it can absolutely work to minimize the behavior being targeted.
  - thebean11 5y ago
    > Effectiveness of prohibition is determined in large part on severity of punishments. The punishments for drugs are pretty severe in much of the US (multiple years in prison). Are you advocating for even harsher punishments than that?
    - lacksconfidence 5y ago
      Not OP, and not advocating it, but I suspect with respect to drugs the problem isn't the amount of punishment. It's the liklihood of punishment. Imagine a dystopia where everyone takes a drug test every day, and if someone fails they go to jail. It seems likely drug use would plummet due to enforcement (and special ways to get around it would spring up for the select few).
    - PKop 5y ago
      Well, yes I am. But is that relevant to the question at hand: if the punishments were more severe, would they decrease drug selling/use? How about if we banned Narcan, do you think that would affect the total number of opiate addicts long term? What if we cut off the hands of drug dealers? Or applied the death penalty to drug dealers? What if we rounded up all the addicts that commit so many crimes in cities today, and degrade the quality of life with tent cities strewn everywhere, and threw them all into the ocean...do you think that would decrease drug use? Of course it would. What I'm pushing back against is the absurd claim that the problem is intractable in terms of "decreasing some behavior through disincentivization", which isn't true.
      - thebean11 5y ago
        Yes I think cutting off arms would discourage drug use to some extent, but I think the price is too high. At some point a policy like that creates more suffering than it prevents. From your example on throwing people into the ocean, it sounds like you agree that a tradeoff exist here. Unless you actually think killing drug users is a good solution to reduce drug use? The question was never whether it was possible to curb drug use with the legal system (that seems like a straw man), but whether the cure is worse than the disease, or whether an alternative cure might be better.
        PKop 5y ago
        >was never Not true and there are many in this thread and elsewhere for years on the internet saying exactly this. Thank you for conceding my point against the ridiculous argument that "prohibition is ineffective"... that no it is, it's only a matter of degree of punishment, which is what I said. >more suffering than it prevents This only matters in some utilitarian conception where all net suffering or utility or whatever is created equal. No, I think drug dealers suffering is not the same as suffering of normal people wanting to live their lives in a productive and healthy way for their community. But this is what politics is for, conflict over interests, values, worldviews, and societal preferences. It's also what all of criminal law deals with: justice for crimes isn't viewed the same as suffering of law abiding people or victims. >a tradeoff exist here Like the tradeoff exists for the death penalty of murders in that justice for that crime requires "harm" to be inflicted on the perpetrator, yes. But this isn't that profound of a concept.
  - airstrike 5y ago
    Prohibition and its enforcement aren’t a zero cost affair, not to mention second-order effects
  - throwawaynay 5y ago
    Drug dealers are routinely executed in countries where the death penalty exist for drugs, it doesn't seem to stop them. People were sentenced to 20years in prison for a joint in the US, that didn't stop most people from trying it. And you really can't deny the "do more harm than good" part. "don't take a very small risk for your health or we will hang you" doesn't exactly seem like harm reduction.
    - jeffreyrogers 5y ago
      Seems like it is much harder to get drugs in Singapore than in Seattle. Prohibition might not be absolute, but it seems effective at reducing the number of people using drugs. Is that a good or bad policy goal, and is it worth the costs? That a political question, but the answer to that is separate from whether prohibition works or not.
      - throwawaynay 5y ago
        >That a political question That's not political, it's science, statistics, facts. Prohibition = more overdoses, more violence, more untreated addiction, younger users, richer criminals, more abuse from the police, more corruption, less incentive to educate yourself/learn a trade when you come from a poor area, more likely to be BORN addicted to drugs because your mom was terrified of getting help before/when she was pregnant, more likely to get aids, more likely to have your life completely and permanently ruined. This whole debate can end in one word: Portugal. There is no debate really, only ignorance. And btw it's not hard to get drugs in any city. I don't know a place on earth where you can't get drugs in an hour or two, besides rural areas.
        robrenaud 5y ago
        It's unclear that the numbers are in your favor. As far as I can tell, as of 2018, the US had 600 opiate users per 100k, Portugal had 250, and Singapore had 30. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2018/10/portugal-opioid https://www.apa.org/monitor/2018/10/portugal-opioid https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/singapore-is-winning-the-war-on-drugs-heres-how/2018/03/11/b8c25278-22e9-11e8-946c-9420060cb7bd_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/singapore-is-winning...
  - vagrantJin 5y ago
    Prohibition aides and cultivates an underworld which operates outside the bounds of legality. Rather put a high tax, like tobacco products, do the state can make a boatload of money from vices rather than enriching the criminal underworld and indirectly funding illegal guns, sex trade, rackets etc... Anecdotally, my own country banned alcohol and cigarette sales during the first lockdown. The black market rose from nowhere and made a filthy amount of money. You can guess whether or not the violent crime rate has increased of decreased.
- babypuncher 5y ago
  State lotteries are a means to shift tax burden from the wealthy to the poor. Every time one is implemented to "support education", it is always followed by a tax break for the upper class, resulting in a net 0 increase in school budgets.
  - bregma 5y ago
    State lotteries are just a tax on the stupid.
    - margalabargala 5y ago
      People like to say this because it's a nice sound-bite that lets people feel like they themselves are not among the stupid. It ignores the reality that poverty is a causative agent for lacking the appropriate math skill to recognize that playing the lottery is not a good financial choice, and self-perpetuates that poverty.
      - nsxwolf 5y ago
        Most people buy lotto tickets so they can spend a few minutes in blissful daydream before they come crashing back down to their financial reality. It's like a very cheap drug. It makes them feel good, so it serves a purpose. Feeling good is good.
        lapetitejort 5y ago
        Having read horror stories of people winning the lottery, I can't even daydream about being rich. I would much rather be an average wage-earner than have my life be destroyed by money.
        mythrwy 5y ago
        Unlike you I'd be willing to take my chances with life destruction in this case. (mostly because I think it would avoid many of the life destroying parts)
tonystubblebine 5y ago
I spent some time in Montana and was shocked to see how many businesses have "casinos" attached to them. I never got to look inside but I think these are basically a small room with a few slot machines. They were everywhere. For example, I ate at a chinese restaurant and there was a side room advertising poker and keno. I came away feeling like there was a web that would catch every single person in the state who had a predilection for gambling addiction. The weirdest sign I saw was attached to a gas station casino: "Weekly grand prize jackpot: $50." That was hard to parse coming from tech salaries that a $50 grand prize would motivate anyone.
- lgdskhglsa 5y ago
  Growing up in Las Vegas, it was common for me to see a slot machine room in grocery stores and gas stations. Most movie theaters, bowling alleys, restaurants, etc were in the casinos. I've known a few people with gambling addictions, and it's definitely not easy with slot machines every where you go. But the casinos pay the State's bills, so it's easy to see why regulation is hard to come by.
- kasey_junk 5y ago
  Cook county IL (the county that encompasses Chicago) legalized some forms of gambling (not in Chicago). Gas stations, bars & even hair salons now have game rooms in them. I find it pretty sad as there is no glamor at all in dunking dollars into bad slot machines at a shell station. But I didn’t find the scratch off tickets they sold at the counter glamorous either.
  - vgeek 5y ago
    https://features.propublica.org/the-bad-bet/how-illinois-bet-on-video-gambling-and-lost/ https://features.propublica.org/the-bad-bet/how-illinois-bet... https://www.propublica.org/article/illinois-video-gambling-waukegan-new-casino-dark-money-local-government-tap-room-gaming https://www.propublica.org/article/illinois-video-gambling-w... These are interesting reads regarding slot parlors in Illinois. It gets repeated in every locale that legalizes slots. Big promises of increased tax revenues, then the actuals are 10%-30% of the forecasts, but by then the horse is already out of the barn. I've looked at a few state level gaming commission data sets and backed out the math, and even in backwoods areas, penny slot machines generate $20/hr average ($240/day) in gross income (even though they're called penny slots, you can easily lose $20 in under 60 seconds based on speed of play, number of lines and bet sizing-- all of which are heavily optimized to trigger reward centers in the brain), so even with expensive $5-10k machines, the recovery time is pretty low, so they'll just metastasize as much as legally allowed.
slap_shot 5y ago
How about fast food or unhealthy food/drinks? And would you change anything about how prescription medication is advertised?
- mdoms 5y ago
  Prescription medication advertising is banned everywhere in the developed world except USA and New Zealand.
  - slap_shot 5y ago
    yes, so the question is what would he/she change about how it is advertised in the US (or I guess in new zealand)
- lancesells 5y ago
  I've noticed they go hand in hand. Fast food or junk food ads showing amazing looking food that doesn't actually look that way, insurance ads to make sure you're a little worried, and then medication to solve many of the ills from eating junk food.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
acomjean 5y ago
the comedian Mitch Hedberg had a bit about this. "You know how they advertise a casino, they always show a guy winning money, but that’s false advertising. Because that’s what happens the least. Perhaps when they advertise a hamburger they could show a guy choking. This is what happened once."
- tamaharbor 5y ago
  Mitch was the best! RIP.
mgh2 5y ago
No system is perfect. Laws are made to protect the majority, not the minority. It takes a lot of effort individually to find out what is ethical, and education seldom teach these. Freedom of religion and separation of church and state helps create a collective conscience to enact laws, but at the end it comes down to each individual's responsibility to search for the truth - an effort that advertising can easily tamper with. We could use more stringent laws for advertising. Note that the gaming and crypto industries have parallels with gambling, both targeting the younger population (least able to control addictions) Disney (a media conglomerate) was initially opposed to sports betting, but once covid hit their bottom line, they turned to this opportunity once it was legal. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27514437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27514437
- lupire 5y ago
  > Laws are made to protect the majority, not the minority. That's not what the US Constitution says.
  - mgh2 5y ago
    Sure, but the elite has close ties with Washington, that is a crude truth
Raidion 5y ago
I honestly agree with you, but am worried about the precedent it would set. If you start banning stuff because of addiction, does it apply to things like soda or fast food? Would it apply to things like baseball cards or other collectables? This is a really tricky problem, as there is clear evidence that these things hurt society as a whole, but it's hard to draw the line who is making deliberate choices about their gambling/smoking/drinking, and who is hooked. Is there a politician somewhere that will try to ban Facebook because of the 'addiction' potential? I'm usually not much of a slippery slope guy, but it does seem weird, especially since a lot of this would be done by regulation, not legislation.
- animal_spirits 5y ago
  Idk people say its hard to draw the line but it doesn't seem like it would be. Here's the line: no advertising for cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, e-cigs. Why this line? these are pretty obviously unhealthy for people. Why not some other line? Well lets take a poll and see what we are willing to do. And then if people think it is important to ban other types of advertising then that can be a new line drawn later.
  - lupire 5y ago
    what about cryptocurrency? stock trading? American football (concussions)? Cars?
    - animal_spirits 5y ago
      We don't have to make a blanket statement that covers all cases. I don't see how this is a slippery slope when there is so much friction to get even one of these industries banned from advertising. Do you really think politicians will ban CAR advertisements? Let's be reasonable about this EDIT - Okay I think I see a concrete reason why gambling advertising should be illegal. The gambling industry makes money by negatively affecting people i.e. gambling wins if you lose. That's literally it. The gambling industry does not make money when their users win. They are specifically advertising so that more users lose. The car industry makes money by providing you a utility. The car industry is not advertising so that more people die in car crashes. But gambling on the other hand _is_ advertising to get more people to lose.
rjzzleep 5y ago
Every movie, series or other thing where people grab the bottle to handle their heartache, happiness or socializing is an advertisement that you should drink. It's going to need a huge transformation in society to change those advertising channels. Just like the movie cig industry was a long term process.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  So you’re saying artists should be regulated on their expression of the human condition? Are people so dumb that they see a movie and think “oh I should drink to handle stress”? Or is it because it works short term?
  - Wiseacre 5y ago
    Censorship is a thing in every society.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
If only every human was an island. Unfortunately we all pay for the gambling addicts.
HWR_14 5y ago
Why stop at vices? At this point, given how much it destroys everything it touches, I'm almost willing to back outlawing advertising in general.
- slaymaker1907 5y ago
  I agree, though clearly some forms of advertising is fairly natural and nearly impossible to eliminate completely. Basic business signage is advertising, but it provides reasonable value at low cost to society (assuming the signage is reasonable, not giant McDonalds arches). The most harmful advertising seems to be third party advertising where one party is paid to show advertising to someone else.
vintermann 5y ago
There are two issues at stake: * Should I be allowed to ruin my health with cigarettes? * Should I be allowed to make money selling cigarettes? Tobacco companies prefer that you ask the first question, but it's really the second question which is interesting. We may, if we wish, say yes to the first and still say hell no to the second. It doesn't even have to mean national monopolies. We can allow microbreweries and cigar makers and cannabis greenhouses and what have you to flourish, but just aggressively restrict their rate of profit. So that if you get into those things, we know you're not doing it to get rich off others' suffering, because you accept that you'll only make a basic living off it (at best). I for one would be totally OK with that, and I think that if the profit motive was successfully removed, things like alcohol consumption would drop like a stone, even if alcohol was cheap.
ecf 5y ago
> Promotion of gambling should be listened to promotion of cigarettes E-Sports has a terrible problem with this, and many organizations are solely supported by gambling site sponsors. Kudos to Riot for outlawing the practice with League of Legends. I wish Valve would do the same.

shipman05 5y ago

This has been my position for a while on so called "vices". Prohibition is ineffective and often does more harm than good, but allowing companies to advertise these products to young people and those who are susceptible to abuse is a net negative for society. Worst of all are government run lotteries. A state run lottery may be preferable to one run by organized crime, but running millions of dollars worth of ads with product tie-ins (Harley Davidson, car companies, cruises, etc.) all while claiming to "support education" is outrageous.

PKop 5y ago
>Prohibition is ineffective and often does more harm than good I don't believe this is true, though it is often parroted as so. Effectiveness of prohibition is determined in large part on severity of punishments. It is imperfect, and will always be. But it can absolutely work to minimize the behavior being targeted.
- thebean11 5y ago
  > Effectiveness of prohibition is determined in large part on severity of punishments. The punishments for drugs are pretty severe in much of the US (multiple years in prison). Are you advocating for even harsher punishments than that?
  - lacksconfidence 5y ago
    Not OP, and not advocating it, but I suspect with respect to drugs the problem isn't the amount of punishment. It's the liklihood of punishment. Imagine a dystopia where everyone takes a drug test every day, and if someone fails they go to jail. It seems likely drug use would plummet due to enforcement (and special ways to get around it would spring up for the select few).
  - PKop 5y ago
    Well, yes I am. But is that relevant to the question at hand: if the punishments were more severe, would they decrease drug selling/use? How about if we banned Narcan, do you think that would affect the total number of opiate addicts long term? What if we cut off the hands of drug dealers? Or applied the death penalty to drug dealers? What if we rounded up all the addicts that commit so many crimes in cities today, and degrade the quality of life with tent cities strewn everywhere, and threw them all into the ocean...do you think that would decrease drug use? Of course it would. What I'm pushing back against is the absurd claim that the problem is intractable in terms of "decreasing some behavior through disincentivization", which isn't true.
    - thebean11 5y ago
      Yes I think cutting off arms would discourage drug use to some extent, but I think the price is too high. At some point a policy like that creates more suffering than it prevents. From your example on throwing people into the ocean, it sounds like you agree that a tradeoff exist here. Unless you actually think killing drug users is a good solution to reduce drug use? The question was never whether it was possible to curb drug use with the legal system (that seems like a straw man), but whether the cure is worse than the disease, or whether an alternative cure might be better.
      - PKop 5y ago
        >was never Not true and there are many in this thread and elsewhere for years on the internet saying exactly this. Thank you for conceding my point against the ridiculous argument that "prohibition is ineffective"... that no it is, it's only a matter of degree of punishment, which is what I said. >more suffering than it prevents This only matters in some utilitarian conception where all net suffering or utility or whatever is created equal. No, I think drug dealers suffering is not the same as suffering of normal people wanting to live their lives in a productive and healthy way for their community. But this is what politics is for, conflict over interests, values, worldviews, and societal preferences. It's also what all of criminal law deals with: justice for crimes isn't viewed the same as suffering of law abiding people or victims. >a tradeoff exist here Like the tradeoff exists for the death penalty of murders in that justice for that crime requires "harm" to be inflicted on the perpetrator, yes. But this isn't that profound of a concept.
- airstrike 5y ago
  Prohibition and its enforcement aren’t a zero cost affair, not to mention second-order effects
- throwawaynay 5y ago
  Drug dealers are routinely executed in countries where the death penalty exist for drugs, it doesn't seem to stop them. People were sentenced to 20years in prison for a joint in the US, that didn't stop most people from trying it. And you really can't deny the "do more harm than good" part. "don't take a very small risk for your health or we will hang you" doesn't exactly seem like harm reduction.
  - jeffreyrogers 5y ago
    Seems like it is much harder to get drugs in Singapore than in Seattle. Prohibition might not be absolute, but it seems effective at reducing the number of people using drugs. Is that a good or bad policy goal, and is it worth the costs? That a political question, but the answer to that is separate from whether prohibition works or not.
    - throwawaynay 5y ago
      >That a political question That's not political, it's science, statistics, facts. Prohibition = more overdoses, more violence, more untreated addiction, younger users, richer criminals, more abuse from the police, more corruption, less incentive to educate yourself/learn a trade when you come from a poor area, more likely to be BORN addicted to drugs because your mom was terrified of getting help before/when she was pregnant, more likely to get aids, more likely to have your life completely and permanently ruined. This whole debate can end in one word: Portugal. There is no debate really, only ignorance. And btw it's not hard to get drugs in any city. I don't know a place on earth where you can't get drugs in an hour or two, besides rural areas.
      - robrenaud 5y ago
        It's unclear that the numbers are in your favor. As far as I can tell, as of 2018, the US had 600 opiate users per 100k, Portugal had 250, and Singapore had 30. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2018/10/portugal-opioid https://www.apa.org/monitor/2018/10/portugal-opioid https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/singapore-is-winning-the-war-on-drugs-heres-how/2018/03/11/b8c25278-22e9-11e8-946c-9420060cb7bd_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/singapore-is-winning...
- vagrantJin 5y ago
  Prohibition aides and cultivates an underworld which operates outside the bounds of legality. Rather put a high tax, like tobacco products, do the state can make a boatload of money from vices rather than enriching the criminal underworld and indirectly funding illegal guns, sex trade, rackets etc... Anecdotally, my own country banned alcohol and cigarette sales during the first lockdown. The black market rose from nowhere and made a filthy amount of money. You can guess whether or not the violent crime rate has increased of decreased.
babypuncher 5y ago
State lotteries are a means to shift tax burden from the wealthy to the poor. Every time one is implemented to "support education", it is always followed by a tax break for the upper class, resulting in a net 0 increase in school budgets.
- bregma 5y ago
  State lotteries are just a tax on the stupid.
  - margalabargala 5y ago
    People like to say this because it's a nice sound-bite that lets people feel like they themselves are not among the stupid. It ignores the reality that poverty is a causative agent for lacking the appropriate math skill to recognize that playing the lottery is not a good financial choice, and self-perpetuates that poverty.
    - nsxwolf 5y ago
      Most people buy lotto tickets so they can spend a few minutes in blissful daydream before they come crashing back down to their financial reality. It's like a very cheap drug. It makes them feel good, so it serves a purpose. Feeling good is good.
      - lapetitejort 5y ago
        Having read horror stories of people winning the lottery, I can't even daydream about being rich. I would much rather be an average wage-earner than have my life be destroyed by money.
        mythrwy 5y ago
        Unlike you I'd be willing to take my chances with life destruction in this case. (mostly because I think it would avoid many of the life destroying parts)

tonystubblebine 5y ago

I spent some time in Montana and was shocked to see how many businesses have "casinos" attached to them. I never got to look inside but I think these are basically a small room with a few slot machines. They were everywhere. For example, I ate at a chinese restaurant and there was a side room advertising poker and keno. I came away feeling like there was a web that would catch every single person in the state who had a predilection for gambling addiction. The weirdest sign I saw was attached to a gas station casino: "Weekly grand prize jackpot: $50." That was hard to parse coming from tech salaries that a $50 grand prize would motivate anyone.

lgdskhglsa 5y ago
Growing up in Las Vegas, it was common for me to see a slot machine room in grocery stores and gas stations. Most movie theaters, bowling alleys, restaurants, etc were in the casinos. I've known a few people with gambling addictions, and it's definitely not easy with slot machines every where you go. But the casinos pay the State's bills, so it's easy to see why regulation is hard to come by.
kasey_junk 5y ago
Cook county IL (the county that encompasses Chicago) legalized some forms of gambling (not in Chicago). Gas stations, bars & even hair salons now have game rooms in them. I find it pretty sad as there is no glamor at all in dunking dollars into bad slot machines at a shell station. But I didn’t find the scratch off tickets they sold at the counter glamorous either.
- vgeek 5y ago
  https://features.propublica.org/the-bad-bet/how-illinois-bet-on-video-gambling-and-lost/ https://features.propublica.org/the-bad-bet/how-illinois-bet... https://www.propublica.org/article/illinois-video-gambling-waukegan-new-casino-dark-money-local-government-tap-room-gaming https://www.propublica.org/article/illinois-video-gambling-w... These are interesting reads regarding slot parlors in Illinois. It gets repeated in every locale that legalizes slots. Big promises of increased tax revenues, then the actuals are 10%-30% of the forecasts, but by then the horse is already out of the barn. I've looked at a few state level gaming commission data sets and backed out the math, and even in backwoods areas, penny slot machines generate $20/hr average ($240/day) in gross income (even though they're called penny slots, you can easily lose $20 in under 60 seconds based on speed of play, number of lines and bet sizing-- all of which are heavily optimized to trigger reward centers in the brain), so even with expensive $5-10k machines, the recovery time is pretty low, so they'll just metastasize as much as legally allowed.

slap_shot 5y ago

How about fast food or unhealthy food/drinks? And would you change anything about how prescription medication is advertised?

mdoms 5y ago
Prescription medication advertising is banned everywhere in the developed world except USA and New Zealand.
- slap_shot 5y ago
  yes, so the question is what would he/she change about how it is advertised in the US (or I guess in new zealand)
lancesells 5y ago
I've noticed they go hand in hand. Fast food or junk food ads showing amazing looking food that doesn't actually look that way, insurance ads to make sure you're a little worried, and then medication to solve many of the ills from eating junk food.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

acomjean 5y ago

the comedian Mitch Hedberg had a bit about this. "You know how they advertise a casino, they always show a guy winning money, but that’s false advertising. Because that’s what happens the least. Perhaps when they advertise a hamburger they could show a guy choking. This is what happened once."

tamaharbor 5y ago
Mitch was the best! RIP.

mgh2 5y ago

No system is perfect. Laws are made to protect the majority, not the minority. It takes a lot of effort individually to find out what is ethical, and education seldom teach these. Freedom of religion and separation of church and state helps create a collective conscience to enact laws, but at the end it comes down to each individual's responsibility to search for the truth - an effort that advertising can easily tamper with. We could use more stringent laws for advertising. Note that the gaming and crypto industries have parallels with gambling, both targeting the younger population (least able to control addictions) Disney (a media conglomerate) was initially opposed to sports betting, but once covid hit their bottom line, they turned to this opportunity once it was legal. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27514437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27514437

lupire 5y ago
> Laws are made to protect the majority, not the minority. That's not what the US Constitution says.
- mgh2 5y ago
  Sure, but the elite has close ties with Washington, that is a crude truth

Raidion 5y ago

I honestly agree with you, but am worried about the precedent it would set. If you start banning stuff because of addiction, does it apply to things like soda or fast food? Would it apply to things like baseball cards or other collectables? This is a really tricky problem, as there is clear evidence that these things hurt society as a whole, but it's hard to draw the line who is making deliberate choices about their gambling/smoking/drinking, and who is hooked. Is there a politician somewhere that will try to ban Facebook because of the 'addiction' potential? I'm usually not much of a slippery slope guy, but it does seem weird, especially since a lot of this would be done by regulation, not legislation.

animal_spirits 5y ago
Idk people say its hard to draw the line but it doesn't seem like it would be. Here's the line: no advertising for cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, e-cigs. Why this line? these are pretty obviously unhealthy for people. Why not some other line? Well lets take a poll and see what we are willing to do. And then if people think it is important to ban other types of advertising then that can be a new line drawn later.
- lupire 5y ago
  what about cryptocurrency? stock trading? American football (concussions)? Cars?
  - animal_spirits 5y ago
    We don't have to make a blanket statement that covers all cases. I don't see how this is a slippery slope when there is so much friction to get even one of these industries banned from advertising. Do you really think politicians will ban CAR advertisements? Let's be reasonable about this EDIT - Okay I think I see a concrete reason why gambling advertising should be illegal. The gambling industry makes money by negatively affecting people i.e. gambling wins if you lose. That's literally it. The gambling industry does not make money when their users win. They are specifically advertising so that more users lose. The car industry makes money by providing you a utility. The car industry is not advertising so that more people die in car crashes. But gambling on the other hand _is_ advertising to get more people to lose.

rjzzleep 5y ago

Every movie, series or other thing where people grab the bottle to handle their heartache, happiness or socializing is an advertisement that you should drink. It's going to need a huge transformation in society to change those advertising channels. Just like the movie cig industry was a long term process.

nemo44x 5y ago
So you’re saying artists should be regulated on their expression of the human condition? Are people so dumb that they see a movie and think “oh I should drink to handle stress”? Or is it because it works short term?
- Wiseacre 5y ago
  Censorship is a thing in every society.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

If only every human was an island. Unfortunately we all pay for the gambling addicts.

HWR_14 5y ago

Why stop at vices? At this point, given how much it destroys everything it touches, I'm almost willing to back outlawing advertising in general.

slaymaker1907 5y ago
I agree, though clearly some forms of advertising is fairly natural and nearly impossible to eliminate completely. Basic business signage is advertising, but it provides reasonable value at low cost to society (assuming the signage is reasonable, not giant McDonalds arches). The most harmful advertising seems to be third party advertising where one party is paid to show advertising to someone else.

vintermann 5y ago

There are two issues at stake: * Should I be allowed to ruin my health with cigarettes? * Should I be allowed to make money selling cigarettes? Tobacco companies prefer that you ask the first question, but it's really the second question which is interesting. We may, if we wish, say yes to the first and still say hell no to the second. It doesn't even have to mean national monopolies. We can allow microbreweries and cigar makers and cannabis greenhouses and what have you to flourish, but just aggressively restrict their rate of profit. So that if you get into those things, we know you're not doing it to get rich off others' suffering, because you accept that you'll only make a basic living off it (at best). I for one would be totally OK with that, and I think that if the profit motive was successfully removed, things like alcohol consumption would drop like a stone, even if alcohol was cheap.

ecf 5y ago

> Promotion of gambling should be listened to promotion of cigarettes E-Sports has a terrible problem with this, and many organizations are solely supported by gambling site sponsors. Kudos to Riot for outlawing the practice with League of Legends. I wish Valve would do the same.