If you listen to radio over the air and live in NY be prepared for the massive amount of money Draft Kings and the like will be throwing at advertising. They opened it up this year in Indiana and it feels like every other commercial on the radio is now for Sports Gambling (it isn't but it feels like it is). Can't lose bets being advertised. "If one of the teams scores a 3 pointer turn your $1 into $100".

I would say that similar to your "poker requiring skill" that sports betting requires analytical skill if you are going to be good at it. You need a familiarity with the teams strengths and weaknesses and how those will offset each other to predict the likely winner. You are of course not competing against other bettors but it takes some skill. I would never bet on sports myself. I'm in the camp that sports are fun to play but not as fun to watch. I personally wish that 80% of the money we spend on college / pro sports instead was spent on teachers and scientists.

But yeah after hearing all these ads every commercial break I selfishly wish the advertising for sports betting was at least regulated like they do for cigarettes (Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1970 banning TV and radio ads).

But not everything is equally addictive. 

In Skinner's experiments, rats were presented with a machine that gave food pellets when they pressed a level. They varied how often the machine would release foods. Every time, once every x times, or completely randomly.

When the reward was random, the rats would press the level far more, even after they had eaten the same amount of pellets as the rats who got a pellet every time. 

https://www.phd-insights.com/learn-user-research/why-is-email-addictive#:~:text=In%20Skinner's%20classic%20studies%2C%20rats,after%20they%20pressed%20a%20lever.&text=Skinner%20observed%20that%20lab%20mice,other%20times%20nothing%20at%20all.

We're also really bad at dealing with probability. People tend to vastly overestimate the chance of unlikely events happening. Statistically, there is no rational reason to ever play something like powerball, but people do.

https://www.cogencyteam.com/news/2018/02/why-are-humans-bad-at-calculating-risk/#:~:text=According%20to%20Paul%20Slovic%2C%20Ph,or%20risky%20commonplace%20events%20are.

Then of course there's the matter of how fast the consequences are. I can definitely destroy my health with twinkies, but that's going to require quite a bit of time, during which it is possible for some kind of intervention. On the other hand, I can overdose on opiods in a single day. So, that is much more dangerous and worth regulation.

So, I don't think that the amount of people who will become addicted to something in a life-ruining way is inevitably going to be the same regardless of what they have access to. Certain things are just more addictive to others. We also have the issue that people are exceptionally bad at navigating the risks and rewards of gambling compared to other areas. And considering gravity of the potential harm and the speed of which it hits, then there's a much stronger case for regulating gambling compared to for example Mayor Mike's campaign against soda.

That doesn't necessarily mean that gambling is serious enough to be regulated, but that depends where you want to draw the line. I don't believe you're a pure libertarian who thinks that anything adults consent to should be allowed for the government, so let's use some examples to draw the line. Assume we are in a society with only adults that meet our current standards for mental competence.

Should heroin be legal?

Should heroin be unregulated?

Should the government be able to ticket people for not wearing seatbelts?

Should the government be able to force car manufacturers to provide seatbelts?

Should the government forbid predatory loan rates?

Lets think this through.  Online gambling isn't new just like any gambling.  People that gamble will find a way to do it and also they will find a way to do it with no restrictions.  Just because it legal doesn't suddenly mean every addicted gambler suddenly will come out of the closet and start to do it online.  Trying to protect people from themselves leads into more problems then it solve most times.  I rather put the effort into education along those lines when the people get burnt than waste a whole lot of time and effort looking for means to stop people from hurting themselves.

When we talk about regulation, I am more in the park of what type of regulations.  I can definitely agree that regulation to prevent abuse and fraud by any establishment but not really about regulating minute details on each gamble.  "Hey, you just spent 500 dollars, we are going to make you stop gambling for today".  That kind of regulation is worthless.

Should Heroin be legal, Yes

Should Heroin be unregulated, Depends.  If the action can involve or cause harm to others yes, if only the individual no.

SeatBelts is the same.  If not wearing a seatbelt can be shown where it can cause issues for others who wear a seat belt or if the seat belt not worn can cause additional damage outside of the person than yes.

Basically, I would always side on giving people a chance to govern themselves as long as that does not cause harm or damage to someone else.

There's much merit in the argument that people will gamble no matter what. Particularly with compulsive behaviors, the more and more difficult the steps between the compulsion and fulfilling it, the less likely the person is to engage in the compulsive behaviors. Pretty sure a recovering alcoholic will be far more likely to recover if there isn't any beer in the fridge.

If your argument is that people who want to gamble are going to do so anyway, then that argument also works against setting any kind of age limits on anything. If a gambler's gonna gamble no matter what, then a 14 year old who wants to smoke is gonna get their cigarettes. Unless making it more difficult will prevent people from doing it, I don't see why a kid shouldn't be able to buy a pack in CVS.

I don't think you'd really argue that fatalities in car crashes and heroin usage can not potentially cause harms to anyone besides those actually injecting heroin or killed in a crash. The point was to figure out what degree of potential harm warrants regulation. So, considering whatever damage you imagine may be caused to others by not wearing seatbelt, using heroin, or not requiring seatbelts or other safety features in cars, should the government regulate these areas?

On principle, I believe that we should regulate gambling as much as possible. In practice, I haven't done quite enough reading on the subject to know what it looks like.

That said, I do want to address the ending bit here because it is something that I hate. Specifically, it is something that I often see when speaking about the lottery: The money from the lottery is going towards education! Fuck that though. What this essentially is, is a regressive tax on hope. It heavily taxes the hope of those of low income to have a better life. We know that those who spend the highest portion of their earnings on the lottery are those who can least afford it, so why exactly are we enabling that? For education? No, we could pay for education through progressive tax increases if we wanted to, we would just rather take the money from the poor... 

Yeah. The money from the lottery going towards education would be good in theory if those with more money were the ones gambling, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

To play devil's advocate though, the justification would be that if people weren't gambling with the state lottery system, they'd gamble elsewhere. Better to recapture some portion of that income than none of it. 

True, age limit really does not stop any kid from gambling as I have experience this on multiple occasions.  Kids will always find a way to do what they should not whether its smoking, drinking, gambling or sex.  The thing is it will lower the amount who only want to experiment but not to fuss about going the extra mile to do so.  Its pretty much the same for any particular activity that can be abused.  I know when growing up, my best friend and I was driving our parents cars before we had driver license, smoking and drinking way before 21.  Fking everything that moved because we could. 

I am more of the mind of how Amsterdam do it.  Why criminalize drugs and put people in prison for usage just like making seats belts or heroine usage a crime and put people behind bars.  I consider gambling the same way, rules to setup safe and effective gambling where people are not scammed I am all for.  Rules trying to prevent people from doing something and govern how they do it I am totally against.  When you make something taboo you give way more power to it then if it was free to anyone and your knowledge and common sense is what leads you to avoid things you cannot control.

So for me should the government regulate these areas, context would be the key.  Case in point.  You can drink alcohol all you want but when you get behind a vehicle lose control and kill someone, you should be tried for manslaughter.  The way I see it, you have the right to drink as much as you want but when you do an action that causes harm to others even property then that is where the government and laws step in.  As an adult, you should be given the freedom to govern yourself its when your actions effect others is when the government needs to step in.

So many people in jail today over substance abuse where that is definitely not the solution and neither would it be for gambling.  Making such things a crime or fines or any type of punishment along those lines I am not in favor of.  

I'm not sure if that is true in general, but especially when it comes to the lottery. There is a lot of casual spending going into the lottery system which isn't always predicated on gambling addiction (also as a side note, it is harder to develop an addiction to something that you don't have access to). I think there are two general trends which indicate that lottery spending is not baked in spending, but instead extra spending: Advertisement and High lotteries.

If this was baked in spending, advertising wouldn't be required, yet as others have mentioned, half of the ads you hear these days are for either the lottery or some online betting service. Clearly this advertising drives use, otherwise it likely wouldn't be so prevalent. 

The second refers to the phenomena of increased spending when we see the lottery reach a particularly high value. Spending on the lottery increases, which again demonstrates that spending is based on external factors and not just an individual's desire to gamble.

This actually brings me to a regulation that I wasn't previously considering: Banning or limiting advertisement for gambling/lotteries. I certainly think we should end spending on state lottery advertisement. Thinking about it, it just doesn't make sense. The state is spending money to advertise something that is essentially a tax?A direct tax would save the advertisement money and be able to be designed in a far more progressive way. As for overall advertisement regulation, I think we should ensure that there are far more qualifications around statements regarding potential winnings.

Don't think I said anything that would vaguely suggest I think gamblers should be fined or jailed.

Charging someone for manslaughter after killing someone under the influence of alcohol is not regulating alcohol, it's regulating homicide. You can still drink as much as you want, and you can still drink and drive. The thing that's being regulated is hitting someone or something with your car. The alcohol is only relevant in establishing fault, so it's not being regulated any more than any other factor that may cause an accident, for example driving when excessively tired. 

Punishing someone for manslaughter does very little to help those who have been harmed either directly or through the societal costs of helping to support the victim who may be unable to work or in need of state provided medical treatment, support those who would have been supported by the victims, higher taxes due to the need for emergency services, generally higher insurance rates, etc. There are civil lawsuits, but that only works if the driver had money/insurance that would cover it, and again doesn't regulate alcohol specifically. 

Penalties for drunk driving itself on the other hand, whether or not anyone is hit, is a specific regulation on how one may use alcohol. If we assume it is effective (https://www.responsibility.org/drunk-driving-fatalities-decreased-in-2017-accounting-for-an-all-time-low-proportion-of-traffic-fatalities which there is reason to believe) in causing less drunk drivers, then less people will be harmed by drunk drivers. The regulation actually protects those who may be harmed, and can shift the burden drunk driving causes in part to those who are responsible (through fines on drunk drivers). We can consider other regulations that would either prevent the harm of drunk driving or shift the burden to those responsible or those benefitting. 

Your argument seems based on the premise that regulation of individuals is inherently useless, which I don't accept. I brought up seatbelts as an example, because that's an area where regulation has had a massive impact. Seatbelt usage has gone tremendously from about 10% of people using them prior to regulation to about 90%. It's unlikely that none of that is attributable to regulation, especially as states with stricter seatbelt regulation sees greater seatbelt usage.

https://magazine.northeast.aaa.com/daily/life/cars-trucks/a-seat-belt-history-timeline/#:~:text=As%20recently%20as%20the%201980s,devices%20adopted%20by%20the%20public.

The idea that we can influence behavior by making something accessible is something that successful companies know well and utilize. When I worked retail, we always had to slide product to the front of peg hooks, because we know people would be less likely to buy it if they had to reach back for it. Amazon and other companies are so keen on enabling one click checkout because they know the fewer steps before $$$ the more likely the customer is to buy something. We know that when candy bars are right by the register people buy significantly more candy than if the same candy is in the candy aisle. https://consumer.healthday.com/vitamins-and-nutrition-information-27/food-and-nutrition-news-316/want-to-eat-healthier-avoid-stores-with-snacks-at-checkout-740721.html If the candy is in a place where you can't avoid it, more people buy it, even though they could have very easily grabbed it in the aisle. Hershey's has put candy bars in stores like Home Depot because more accessibility means more chocolate. So accessibility leads to more chocolate sales, and I don't see why it would lead to less gambling.

You might argue that those who are compulsive chocolate bar eaters are the ones who would have bought the candy bar no matter what, and the extra 17% are from people who are not addicted. But, that's also probably not true. One of the recommended ways to curb compulsive behaviors is to put a delay between the compulsion and the behavior. https://www.helpguide.org/articles/anxiety/obssessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd.htm Interrupting automatic or compulsive patterns is the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy, which is recognized as one of the more effective types of therapy.

If interventions can be effective (which I think they clearly can be when you look at examples of regulatory successes), accessibility to a product or service increases usage (which seems pretty clear based on the efforts of companies to increase ease of access), and gambling is a significant problem that can have impact beyond the gambler (which I don't think you can honestly deny), then the question becomes to what extent are we willing to limit freedom to mitigate the problem.

Obviously context matters... Nobody is saying the government should regulate for shits and giggles. The point of asking about concrete examples was to figure out the contexts which justify or don't justify regulation, so we could see where online gambling would fall. But, we don't seem to be getting past the abstract to the point I'm actually interested in, so I'm going to check out here. Respond at your own risk, because I may or may not read the response or respond back. Not like saying this out of anger or anything, just don't want you wasting your time.