this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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jfc every single thing they come out saying they want to do is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
And they're going to win, too.
Currently struggling with someone close and their gambling addiction. I'm too biased to have a fair opinion here, but I frankly think Japan has a better no gambling policy. Sure you can still do it, with extra steps, but fuck, gun laws fixed mass shootings, and anti-gambling laws would reduce financial suicide.
The problem with my close relative is that the gambling problem is their coping mechanism for a bigger mental health issue, but convincing a doctor that there's a problem is fucking hard.
So they get upset, throw a tantrum, storm the pokies and try to end it all a spin at a time. All because 10 years ago they would do it with $200 and have a good laugh about it either way and walk out. But the inhibition is gone.
So we've banned them from the pubs and clubs, but there's always somewhere else they can go.
Can't get help, can't block the financial suicide. And I'm not a relative and their family is part of the core issue so no help there.
Anyway thanks for making it so hard Australia. Why not make it even bigger.
Sorry, did you mean "them" as in your person, or pokies? Because honestly, banning pokies from being anywhere other than casinos (after all, Australia is currently almost the only place you'll ever find pokies outside a casino—with our measly 0.3% of the world's population, we have 75% of its non-casino pokies, and 18% of all the pokies) would be one of the biggest things we could do to improve things. That, plus banning the advertising of gambling like we banned smoking ads decades ago—especially in connection with popular sporting events.
Unfortunately for your person yeah, the most important thing we can do is to prevent people getting addicted in the first place, because it becomes much more difficult once someone already has an addiction. Because yeah, you can try to prevent them accessing it, but someone with an addiction-fed determination will find a way around it. We need to get better at treating it as a serious medical problem, but that's a much harder problem to solve.
Yes, "them" was meant to identify my person. I know without the pokies another addiction probably would have been in its place, it's just I can't help but wonder how many other addictions can lose tens of thousands of dollars in a weekend bender.
It's horrible, but after 12 months of this I sometimes find myself thinking if suicide would have been kinder to the spouse and the rest.
Mostly I wish the mental health route was just easier. Nearly nobody likes to talk about it since it is seen like a failing of the character, not a health issue like a virus. Don't dare say anything at work. The GP simply says "well don't do that then". And friends evaporate at the mention of it. Family are often the cause of it.
Unfortunately when it comes to gambling neither side seems to want any reduction. Sure the libs are saying they'll allow more pokies, but under Labor we got a huge fucking new casino for "tourism" because the thing that would really set Brisbane apart is a big casino - like every other state capital. They even built that casino at the same time that the casino operators in other states were being found to facilitate money laundering.
Government bribery is by far the best investment any large company can make. The ROI is incredible.
The Greens certainly do. At the Brisbane City Council elections earlier this year, they proposed a ban on renewing leases to Council facilities to any organisation with pokies, and they had a proposal for shutting down one of our two horse racing venues (each literally right next to each other) to put in parkland, housing, and public facilities.
Their Victorian state policy includes an increase of tax on pokies to 65%, a Royal Commission into Crown, and a much wider ban on advertising of gambling.
Yes, but the Greens are rarely in a position to make decisions.