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[av_heading heading=’VIEWPOINTS | What is legal is not necessarily moral’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY OSCAR CRUZ
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Sunday, June 25, 2017
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IT IS NOT merely a question of what is legal. The right question is what is ethically upright and morally sound. That this and that gambling enterprises are legal – is granted. The same is in fact said of all the other downright casinos.
That casinos are ethically upright and morally sound – this would be difficult to prove and futile to defend before decent people with sound moral values, upright ethical judgment. If an old saying were still true, the answer to such ridiculous claims would simply be: “Tell it to the marines!” considering that the marines then seldom had their feet on the ground and the putrid realities thereon.
So it is that even simple people on the streets in their right senses say casinos deprive people of their hard-earned money, destroy family fortunes together with the families that own them, corrupt gamblers leading them to be dishonest employers or employees.
But one of the most deleterious potentials of untrammelled gambling is the creation of pathological gamblers. And no less than the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders states that said consummate gamblers have five of at least 10 maladaptive behavioral manifestations:
(1) Are pre-occupied with gambling, e.g., preoccupied with re-living past gambling experiences, continuously planning the next gambling venture, or thinking of ways how to get money to gamble with;
(2) Need to gamble with increasing amounts of money in order to achieve the desired progressively more excitement;
(3) Have repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or to stop gambling;
(4) Are restless or irritable when attempting to cut down on or to stop gambling;
(5) Gamble as a way of escaping from problems or of relieving a dysphoric mood just as in the feeling of helplessness, guilt, anxiety, depression;
(6) After losing money in gambling, often return another day to get even – something like chasing one’s losses;
(7) Lies to family members and friends, to therapists or others to conceal the extent of their involvement with gambling;
(8) Commit illegal acts such as forgery, fraud, theft, or embezzlement to finance their vice of gambling;
(9) Have jeopardized or lost significant relationships, these or those jobs, career opportunities included;
(10) Rely on others to provide money to relieve desperate financial situations caused by gambling. (Cf. DSM-IV tm, 312.31, p. 618)
Who dares to say that gambling is okay?/PN
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