I think the same thing applies to most vices. Any friction in engaging in the vice is a moderating influence. Someone is more likely to get dangerously drunk while drinking at home than at a bar in which you have to order every drink from a bartender. It was likely more difficult to fall into a porn addiction if you needed to look another human in the eyes when you rented that dirty VHS tape. It's easier to overeat if you're having the food delivered to your home than if you order every item from a waiter in a restaurant. When we all know an activity should be done in moderation, making it as easy to engage in that behavior as possible is probably a bad idea.
I would also spend way more money on gambling when at a location to do so. The desire to bet on sports on my phone is really low because it's boring so I won't do more than enough to make a game interesting.
When I used to have to make an effort to get things that are now legal but previously illegal I would be much more compelled to make that effort to avoid having to do it in the future when I wanted the thing. Which inevitably would lead to more doing of the thing. Now that I know I can get it anytime I don't actually care about it.
There are fake games, and even leagues, made specifically for people to bet on. To me there is no appeal, but I'd expect to someone gamblign there must be some appeal. See this article, there have been cases in cricket, but I know less about that game. https://josimarfootball.com/2024/10/21/childs-play/
I tend to agree with the parent that friction is useful for many 'sin activities' I might extend this to most drive through restaurants. For gambling having to go to a casino, a racetrack, or a bookkeeper who isn't legal all act as points where users drop out of the process. Having it on your phone is always available and the path of a user can be modified to get them to spend/bet more.
Some other good examples (I think) are simply watching things. It doesn't need to be porn, think about how many people are chronically watching mindless trash content for hours at a time because we've made constant scrolling an immersive experience available all the time everywhere. I know I am. We've gone so far as to even eliminate the necessity to decide what to watch, the media companies have automated the process of turning what used to be customers into their products and delegated the friction to the telecom companies. When you think about your phone bill, really we should be paying basically nothing for it (and in some places it's nearly that cheap), but in expensive places we're paying like $80/month to engage with 5 free addictions that only take value away from our lives. They're charging us to sell ourselves to each other.
Weed: I agree that it should be legal, but how many new customers have been created since a store opened in every available vacant commercial space within a legal jurisdiction?
The pursuits of car and oil companies have literally re-shaped the built environment in the name of making it as easy as possible to be sedentary when you'd otherwise have to move—most significantly so in places that missed out on dense urbanization in the pre-industrial period—and now all we know how to do is get in our big SUV and drive to Costco, then to McDonalds, because otherwise there's a near-zero likelihood you have access to more economical healthy choices that are persuasively close to not drive to. Most North American cities effectively made it illegal to do anything else but sprawl, and concentrated as much wealth and power as possible in the hands of mega-franchise companies and private equity while we watched our wetlands get paved over for parking lots (we unironically should have listened to Joni Mitchell on this one). Good luck opening up a new corner store, those only go on the main avenues and shockingly someone owns that land already.
Credit Cards: Obvious one, but if you obscure how much you've spent and eliminate the requirement to keep track of what's available to you, maybe even add a nice little ding sound when you tap your phone, you're going to buy a hell of a lot more.
Here's a list of cricketers that have been banned over the years. Many were even the captain of their respective team:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cricketers_banned_for_...
The list also doesn't include players like Ricky Ponting, Mark Waugh and Shane Warne who got away with a fine from the ACB.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-04/illegal-tobacco-is-a-...
On the other hand, sports betting and advertising for it are absolutely rampant.
Also, these policies usually fail in getting existing users to quit, but they succeed in deterring prospective users. The idea that these policies are "not going very well" is an incredibly narrow-minded and short-sighted perspective.
While the article you linked points out that illicit tobacco sales make up a large percentage of the market, it’s a much smaller market. You might as well tell us that most guns sold in Japan are illegal, and therefore Japan has a bigger problem with guns than America.
I'm no fan of tobacco, I think taxing it heavily is good, and Australia's policies were (IMHO) working well until quite recently. But, as the article explains at length, the price difference is now so extreme and the legal risk of illegal sales so low that drug dealers are muscling in and we're getting drug dealer competition tactics as a result.
Australia doesn't let you bring a bottle of water onto planes going into their country, even if you bought it inside the airport. Allowing people to bring in drugs like tobacco but strictly forbidding a 1 dollar bottle of water is a problem with enforcement. If tobacco were treated the same way dangerous, addictive substances like H2O are, things might work better.
Biggest scam of all time.
These new sports books are operating purely to enrich the owners of the platform. Ban 'em.
I've been in an online community where some users do a group buy for certain lottos when the prize is big enough. Sending $2 by paypal/venmo is easier and lower friction that going to one of the stores near me where I can but a ticket myself. I still think it's kinda dumb, but I do plenty of dumb things and I buy one infrequently enough to be ok with it.
Problem is, state funding for those public concerns are often reduced by the same (or more) amount lottery revenue generates. For example, Florida pitched their state lottery as funding education (amongst other "who could be against this?" programs), yet failed to inform voters that existing funding would ultimately be reduced in a compensatory fashion.
Sports betting has significant negative impacts. For every $1 a household spent on betting, it reduced savings by $2. https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/online-spor.... This impacts not just individuals, but spouses and children who don’t “consent” to the negative impacts this has on their lives.
And it really saddens me to see American children being introduced to gambling at a younger and younger age via things like loot boxes, blind boxes, and trading card game speculation.
I wonder if that makes them more or less vulnerable later in life. Are lootboxes a vaccine or a devastating childhood infection?
I find it telling the the people that have this opinion always seem to believe that they are going to be the arbiters of how other people should live, and that they themselves are without the vices that they would regulate.
And I even agree on the betting bit: it's bad. But then again, so is voting for criminals and yet, we allow it and arguably that causes a lot more damage than betting.
Did you ask OP if they think that, or are you just assuming that?
I’ve been blessed not to have addictions to substances or gambling. But I’m a snacker and could afford to lose 25 pounds. (Cardiovascular issues present in south asians at a lower BMI than for others, apparently.) I’d love social reinforcement to help with weight management, e.g. portion sizes when eating out.
As for portion sizes: my simple rule is that if I did not put it on the plate myself I don't necessarily have to eat it and peer pressure be damned.