Yeah, in reality they don't prohibit it because they feel like the thing has a negative effect on people, but they do because they want to control the people and don't want them to be exposed and get the benefit of that particular thing on offer.
In my country there is one particular man who says, Anything that the government bans gets a more rapid growth than when it was not prohibited. The reason is because the people have seen the government never do something without ill intention behind it.
That is, to me, the correct approach. Governments will always offer and appear as saviors, and people will idolize them However, when there are prohibitions, it is a violation of the freedoms that we deserve as human beings For the government, there are no bans Unless the United States sets them as one of the global prohibitions, they still ignore them Therefore, prohibiting gambling is because they are always looking for their own benefit.
I'm too in the same thought process as you guys. There could be some people that might be destroying their lives due to gambling but such stupid people are everywhere. If they are not destroying their lives through gambling, they'll do it with some other ways. It's a natural flow of money that travels from one to other. Restricting it would be against the financial freedom of people. In modern time, government should limit themselves and let the market decide what it wants and what not. They could just regulate it and earn a cut from the profit.