Gambling as an Addiction Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Gambling as an Addiction - Essay Example 76 By some standards, including those of the present writer, it is unfortunate that many persons now without them are apt to develop gambling difficulties under legalized systems. But it is suggested that if this problem becomes particularly serious then the society might care to discover techniques to handle the situation that are a good deal more effective than those hit-and-miss, haphazard approaches now in fashion when gambling flourishes undercover. It is claimed that psychologically gambling serves as a ritualistic flirtation with an unknown fate. Gambling has been called "a kind of question addressed to destiny," and it has been maintained that the fascination of gambling is that it is "a simulation of life itself." Success at gambling is supposed to be transposed by the gambler into a general sign of favor from otherwise inscrutable gods, somewhat in the manner of, for instance, the prize fighter who traces his success to the fact that "Somebody Up There Likes Me," rather than to a fast right hand and an unusual ability to withstand punishment. It was this mental transposition, as Max Weber has shown while tracing the purported origins of capitalism, that led financially successful persons in early Calvinistic societies to credit their wealth to divine approval of their total person and thus to regard it as an indication of a future place in heaven. Gambling shows an elaborate history through the annals of civilization. Stone-Age people are known to have tossed painted pebbles and to have cast knucklebones, though it is not certain whether their attempt was to win somebody else's stone axe or to invoke magic and to facilitate prophecy. We have records from India from as early as 321 B.C. showing the existence of a governmental department that regulated gambling, with a Superintendent of Public Games who supplied dice for a fee of 5 percent of the receipts. 10 Public lotteries were common in the United States from early colonial times until the 1830's. Many institutions of higher learning, including Columbia, Harvard, and Yale, were financed by public lotteries. Reactions against State-sponsored gambling were due to numerous scandals connected with its operation as well as to a growing sense of moral outrage. (Richard McGowan, 1994). Major concern in the United States today centers about four kinds of gambling operations: (1) numbers; (2) casino-style gambling; (3) lotteries; and (4) parimutuel betting at race tracks and its extension, offtrack betting. Numbers remain illegal throughout the United States; casino gambling is legal only in the State of Nevada; lotteries have recently been started in New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts; and offtrack betting was inaugurated in New York City in April 1971, in a move that has been watched with special care by other jurisdictions, particularly those and there are but few which do