[DeadMoneyDad]

[ QUOTE ]
My journalism teacher asked each student to come up with a topic to write an opinion on. I had no idea until he called on me, then after a few seconds I said "poker should be legalized". A couple students giggled, and the teacher asked why I thought it should be legal. I said it gets unfairly lumped with other forms of gambling that are based completely on luck, like slot machines. He then asked me what I felt about the many families that go broke from poker. I didn't have any articulate answer for that, even though I believe it is mainly due to irresponsibility.

What would your answer be to his question?

Any other helpful tips on writing this paper would be appreciated.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well if I had this topic I would follow a thesis that tracked prohibition as the central theme.

I would show that the current anti-gambling crowd has done as the anti-drinking crowd did, and has over stated the problem. The British Problem gambling study shows that gambling attracts about the normal distribution of people prone to becoming addicted to alomst anything. I doubt I can find the study but I read where some people who like to tan can get addicted to tanning.

I would then use the British, New Zealand, South Africa regulatory models to show that using revenue from the taxable income actually is the only way that true focus has been brought to help the "many families" who may get harmed.

Because in a prohibition model the gambling is not only immoral but now illegal, the government spends its recources fighting increased criminal problems and the actual "harmed families" have even less chance of ever receiving help from anyone as the State now has even less of a reason to help them.

Using prohibition as an example shows that this course of action as with drinking lead to more non-problem drinkers getting hurt and the government action actually causing more problems than it had before it took any action. The quality of the drink got worse to the point where people were dying from "bath tub gin", the bars were now controled by criminals, since there was no regulation the criminals ended up fighting for market share with tommy guns in the streets.

I can provide you a link to a paper that discusses how "criminalizing" the flow on money on the internet actually will lead to the quicker adoption of completely untracable forms of money. This internet revolution angle is perhaps the most worrisome to governments. Becuse it is the digital form of them "loosing control" of the streets.

As it is this "help the families" is a politically crappy position by our opponets. Sort of the extreme of Nancy saying "just say no to drugs." The small number of people who actually might be subject to harm are held out as the people to be helped when all they are getting is being used as a political tool. The opposition doesn't care one bit about them, actually those of us willing to discuss sensible not over burdensome regualtion are the only ones who really show any possible help for the people who will possibly get hurt.


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