This really was an interesting thread because of the subject matter but after trolls and signature spammers started doing what they do, the thread has somewhat derailed. Gambling with fake money as an alternative to help those with gambling addictions defeats the object of trying to rehabilitate those in trouble.
What happens is that in theory it seems simple enough, if someone is gambling with real money and losing too much of it then gambling with play money may seem to resolve those issues, but we know things are never that simple, even if a person never gambled with real money again we need to also consider the issue of the time spent gambling, when gambling with real money since our capital is limited this puts a limitation to the amount of time we can gamble as well, but play money is infinite so a person could gamble every single day and not lose any money, and that person will still be addicted to gambling as his behavior is self-destructive, since gambling all day for months with play money will have negative effects on their health and personal relationships.