The costs of addicted gamblers: should the states initiate mega‐lawsuits similar to the tobacco cases?

In 1999, The Economist cited to the critics of gambling activities and raised the spectre that ‘there might be a lot of money to be made by suing the entities that knowingly get people addicted to gambling’. This observation paralleled the long-held conclusions among gambling addiction experts such as the former executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, Arnie Wexler, who highlighted the concerns of the gambling interests in 1997: