But while it is outside the purview of government to prohibit access to gambling, should the state—and you, by extension—benefit from its promotion? And what are our individual and collective responsibilities to those whose injury sustains us?
Sports betting is only one of our recent national experiments in licensing addictive behaviors. New York City’s taxpayer-funded experiment with “safe sites,” where heroin users can slowly kill themselves with properly sterilize instruments and under proper medical supervision, is another. As an alternative to the failed war on drugs, making New Yorkers into passive collaborationists with a regime that encourages (indeed, extols the empowering virtues of) shooting up while observing best practices isn’t working.
At least New York’s judgement-free opiate-abuse zones are ostensibly designed to reduce the risks to the user. They are not, however, designed to minimize the risk to the societies in which they are situated, as California soundly affirmed with its governor’s decision to veto the establishment of such sites in the state. Gambling addiction, by contrast, doesn’t leave in its wake an army of highly visible and menacing zombies. Its consequences are hidden from view, and so we absorb the costs of this new licentiousness without fully apprehending the damage it is doing. But we are supporting it, and we are benefiting from it. What responsibility do we, therefore, share in our obligation to the afflicted?
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