You should never place the title of an "escape" for something that can consume you whole if you fall deep enough in the hole! It depends on the type of escape though as you provided some examples such as pleasure or an escape from grieving. I suppose if its a short term escape to get your mind off
Regarding what OP was saying, I think he meant that some persons uses gambling as a means to escape from their current negative situation such as times that they are emotionally down due to death of a love one, lose of job, lose of a big contract, divorces and any bad occurrences of life that you can think of. While OP was trying to make a point off this topic because of the experience he had in his country, gambling can still make a lot of people to become trapped while trying to use it as an escape of their emotions and can cause themselves more problem.
maybe it's true that gambling can be an escape from certain events but the problem is when this gambling is used as an escape that must be considered is that gambling itself can make us have different motives when we do it, for example, at the beginning of gambling the intention was only to fill or vent feelings, but the opportunity to become addicted or interested further is still there, I myself do not think of making gambling an escape for any reason. Moreover, with us who are looking for an escape, we should look for things or activities that do not have a big risk while gambling itself has a big risk besides that it can make our emotions uncontrollable and why are we looking for an escape because our condition is unstable, it is quite risky when making gambling an escape.