Some people always do get this wrong, not everything is relating to a spiritual issue especially gambling, it's more relating to a mental issue than something spiritual for instance you shouldn't be referring an addicted gambler to the church or spiritual home for prayers, rather such cases should be handled by a mental health practitioners
, psychologist or the rightful professionals to handle the situation, your spiritual leader or teacher is just a religious leader meant to handle spiritual cases and not the right one to handle such cases, I don't know about other societies but I've seen people in my region make such errors and it needs to be addressed.