1. Gambling in fact has many negative externalities. If someone gets addicted, the likelihood is much higher to be depressed. Depression is factor, which leads to high costs for the society.
2. Gambling addiction leads to economic costs because of crime actions. Other market actors have to increase their security standards, which means higher costs.
3. Many gambling addicts go as a consequence to jail. Jail means EXTREMELY high costs to society.
What are your thoughts on this topic?
Unfortunately, government do not look at this kind of stat they are more looking at the revenue they can collect from the taxes they impose on these casinos and from their workers and from companies that are associated with gambling casinos, they allocate a small portion of funds from the victims of gambling and they still have a big chunk of the revenues
I think they do but we must understand that things are never simple, lets put the example of the pandemic, on one hand governments had the health of the economy and on the other they had the health of the people which one do you pick? If you protect people and order them to go on a lockdown the economy will suffer but if they let people still do their normal activities we could have a lot more deaths, governments choose the health of the people over the economy and now we are dealing with those consequences, and something similar happens with making gambling legal.