It is oddly easy for a culture to decide which kinds of self-destruction are acceptable, which ones must be hidden behind red tape and shame. Alcohol is everywhere because we learned to decorate with it. We call it tradition, celebration, the good life. The ads get a warning in a font so tiny you need a magnifying glass. So it all feels sanitized, prepackaged, safe-enough-to-ignore. Nobody checks the statistics behind the campaign slogans. Hospitals know, families know, kids growing up with broken promises know, but billboards do not disappear.

Gambling, though, perhaps it is too obvious. It is not hidden. A drink enables you to tell yourself a tale about socialising, relaxation, just being human. Gambling is a reflection of your brain’s desires, the primordial craving for dopamine, and nobody is comfortable with that level of exposure in public. We regulate, restrict, wrap it in law. Not for well being, mainly for comfort, our, not their.
It is not about what is safe or risky. It is about which parts of the truth we can dress up and put out in daylight. So we let the liquor ads shine, paint Drink Responsibly, and we hope nobody reads the fine print, or remembers what they have lost.

There is no real symmetry here, just ritual. We get used to these rituals, repeat them, shrug when they do not work. We forget, or pretend, that harm is not democratic. It just follows the script we write for it. And nobody rewrites the script.