British Police to screen suspects for signs gambling addiction is driving crime
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Australian pubs, restaurants, hotels have “vip” rooms. Rooms filled with gambling machines. They can’t advertise “pokie machines”, the Australian term for gambling machines so instead they renamed them to “vip rooms”, advertising under another name instead. Walking down a street you see pubs with separate entrances with big bold signs “vip room”. I’d guess “vip” rooms are the main income for Australian pubs as they’re such a prominent feature.
Gambling is a massive industry in Australia. Australia gambles more than anywhere else. With so much money involved it seems it’s bit of a dark murky industry. A YouTuber journalist/comedian got firebombed just the other week after a series of investigative videos on New South Wales gambling corruption https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/friendlyj.... The same journalist has had his house raided by terrorist police on direct command from politicians for getting on the wrong side of them with corruption videos.
J. Edgar Hoover, FBI chief, was a known illegal gambler and kept the police from cracking down. After his death they applied the methods known as "COINTELPRO" when used against the civil rights movement to the destruction of the "Cosa Nostra" Mafia.
There was a long period of increasing legitimization of the gambling industry in the US, first in a few entrepot such as Las Vegas and Atlantic City and eventually everywhere, helped on by the tremendous interest that the public has in gambling and also the perception that extreme sports betting hasn't done that much harm in the UK.
There are many people for whom it seems to be "good clean fun" but I also read stories of people embezzling because of gambling addiction: for instance a woman who worked for the local municipal bus company stole $700,000 that she lost gambling.
On a more serious note, I’ve engaged in many vices myself, but never had any interest in gambling. First time I went into a casino I got an incredibly depressing vibe.
There are plenty of people who use moderate amounts of enjoyable things like alcohol, gambling, unhealthy foods, and drugs. There will always be outliers who can’t control their consumption and have lives ruined by it.
- Yet untrained in achieving sustainable $temporary-positive-results-of using-X in life
- Still uncomfortable in sustained, nuanced work with X
- Very unskilled with X; in need of training and support ("X-101 level" or white belt model)
- Unsure of how to practically develop or act on a risk model with regard to X
In one of my professional areas, these are some examples of how I model the tendency to attach/detach in unwanted ways, and it works very well vs. "hey I'm really caught up in this mindset I don't like" or "I keep delivering myself to my fears" or other less-tractable models.
1. Speaking mostly in terms of modeling as an institution on behalf of such individuals, not so much telling addicts this and expecting them to take it from there