Regulating Vice

As a non-gambler, I have to ask: what is the difference among governments being in the business of profiting from gambling and hockey players, their wives or anyone else engaging in it? Feb. 10, 06

[. . . . ] Published reports have named Jones as one of those who is alleged to have bet on football games over the course of a police investigation by New Jersey authorities.

And another report in the Associated Press says Gretzky was allegedly heard on a wiretap talking to Tochett, discussing how his wife could avoid being implicated. [. . . . ]

Give Gretsky this; if true, at least he's a loyal husband.

Believe me, I hate the whole gambling business because of the criminal underbelly -- the reported unsavoury dealings and possibly criminal gangs, but I fail to see how, in one case, gambling is all right but in the other, not. What does this mean? "Under New Jersey law, it is illegal to operate a gambling business for profit." Why else, but for profit, would anyone engage in a business?

I am revealing my ignorance about the whole area of gambling but I am genuinely puzzled. Does it imply hockey games might be fixed so someone could make money? Is it something like the current attitude toward marijuana where a little bit might have been legalized, even in Canada, under a Liberal government, but a bunch of bales crossing a border would be a criminal act ... and therefore, not a good thing for society? How much alcohol or sex or gambling or any so-called vice turns it from a good thing for government in $$$ earned, to a bad thing for the rest of society if it is not controlled? I rather like free choice myself if something is not evil for society, in which case, why is a little bit all right? (Forgive me for musing, but I neither gamble nor buy lottery tickets; I could never be a madam and no-one is offering big bucks for my body so this is just questioning how one draws the line in any of this.)

Sometimes the attempt to regulate vices leaves me totally puzzled. I have been in places where children were at large parties that included flowing wine and even been in restaurant-bars with their parents attending large-group functions. Their parents' drinking seemed to affect the children not at all; they played together where everyone could see them, then returned to the table and went to sleep on their parents' laps or across a couple of chairs. None of the children ever came to the table wanting to try the wine and life went on normally. Everybody went to work or school the next day and they were the healthiest group of families I have known, as a group. So is drinking wine a vice that should be controlled? How does anyone decide? And who chooses who may decide?