Ethical Problems of Gambling

Ethical Problems of Gambling
SOC120: Introduction to Ethics & Social Responsibility
Eliza Gordner
October 3, 2011

  Gambling and all the issues it brings have had an enormous impact on my life.   Gambling is the practice of playing games of chance or betting, in the hope of winning money.   Gambling is also the reason my marriage ended.   I could no longer deal with whole pay checks being lost to gambling and living week to week while money was being thrown away.   Gambling addiction ruins families and mine was one of its victims.  
  There are many types of gambling including state sponsored lotteries, casino’s, sport betting including horse and dog betting and online gambling.   Convenient stores, truck stops and bars now have slot machines.  
  Lotteries are more popular than ever and will continue to be so as long as state politicians have no clue how to raise revenue while also campaigning on the impossible platform of reducing taxes and not cutting essential programs.   Lotteries will also remain popular as long there is the occasional multi-hundred million dollar winner.   While the idea of the lottery may seem like a relatively recent thing that has arisen in concert with capitalist economics, the history of lotteries in fact goes at least back to ancient Rome.   Roman emperors routinely held lotteries for important visitors; it is assumed that Augustus Caesar was the first to come up with the idea of selling lottery tickets to these people.   The prizes ranged from slaves favored by the infamous Nero to what might be termed gag gifts that lesser known Heliogabalus preferred: things like dead animals.   Still, it is to Augustus that America's uncreative state legislators owe the idea of holding public lotteries as a means of paying for necessities without calling it a tax (Sexton, 2008).
  In modern English, a casino is a facility which houses and accommodates certain types of gambling   activities.   Casinos are most commonly built near or combined...