> Better to have the demand served open and legally than forcing people underground. Alcohol prohibition should have made it abundantly clear decades ago that

> Better to have the demand served open and legally than forcing people underground. Alcohol prohibition should have made it abundantly clear decades ago that attempting to ban vices will only leas to criminal empires, and it's just the same with gambling, prostitution, porn and marijuana. It's not obvious to me that all vices are created equal here. If forcing gambling underground creates a criminal empire or two but results in, say, 80% fewer gambling addicts who end up damaging their lives and those of their families, which is the larger harm? Fake numbers, obviously the benefits/harms would depend on several different factors, but I don't think a one size fits all approach makes sense because "illegal gambling gangs" didn't seem to cause the same sort of larger societal problems the last several decades that "illegal drug gangs" or prohibition-era alcohol gangs have. I would assume this is because the lack of a need for the same sort of supply chain that you could attempt to monopolize and dominate.