Unethical Reasonings of Gambling

There are many reasons why it is unethical to gamble. There are now only two states who do not permit any sort of gambling. There are many different types of gambling such as: internet gambling, slot machines, poker, bets on horse racing, dog racing, sports, bingo, and the lottery. Many state governments have endorsed the lottery to bring revenue into their state. Other countries and states as approved gaming (slot machines) for revenue.

Gambling causes many problems for the areas that do allow gambling, it promotes bad behavior. There are many ethical problems which arise with the use of gambling. In this paper I will show the ethical problems which arise with gambling. I also plan to explain why it is unethical to allow any sort of gambling and most important why governments should not be doing the business of gambling.

There are many ethical problems which arise with gambling. The first is addicts, these people get addicted to gambling because they see it a possible way of earning a lot of money quickly, without having to work for it. They start to gamble and spend a full months wages, now they need money for that month so they dig deeper into their income before they know it they have spent their life savings. When they run out of money they then borrow from others. Before they know it they end up losing everything they have including their family. Their family ends up going through hardship because everything they had is also gone. "Gambling losses were five times the narcotics bill; more than 20 times the cost of hijacking; four times the losses in embezzlements, fraud, and forgery combined; ten times greater than robbery, burglary, theft, and shoplifting; 25 times greater than vandalism and arson, and more than twice the cost of maintaining all federal, state, and local police, plus the expense of operating our penal system and courts which handle criminals. And what was the cost of Gambling? 30 billion dollars a year" (Kimball, 1975 para. 3). With this amount of money that is wasted because of gambling could go towards building up our cities infrastructure or go towards the federal deficit. Moore stated that many compulsive gamblers will only admit to half of their losses to where they see the only way for help or out is to commit suicide. 20 percent of compulsive gamblers who sought help through Gamblers anonymous end up committing suicide. Surveys indicate 15 to 20 percent of compulsive gamblers commit suicide (Moore L. 1996). With these deaths the government ends up picking up the bill for these victims.

The next problem that arises with gambling is it impacts the less fortunate of society. In Canada a study was done stating, "10.5 per cent of men between 18-34