Maryland high schools may be required to adopt gambling addiction curriculum

[The Buzz]

Maryland Sen. Bryan Simonaire, who directs the State Department of Education, has proposed a bill that would develop a program for local schools to teach high school students the dangers of gambling.

From The Capital News:

“From a governmental policy standpoint, the state receives money from gambling revenues that can be used to help other priorities in our state, but also adversely enables many citizens to become gambling addicts, which creates other issues for the state,” he told Capital News Service.

Simonaire cited numerous studies in arguing the need for required education on the risks of gambling.

Multiple studies have shown that people aged 18 to 34 are at the highest risk of developing a gambling addiction.

The risk of gambling addiction is higher among those in lower socioeconomic classes and increases the earlier they begin gambling in adolescence, according to the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, in Australia.

The Maryland Health Department raises revenue to treat gambling addiction through the Problem Gambling Fund.
Annual payments of $425 per slot machine and $500 per table game go to this fund every year, according to Maryland law.

Simonaire expressed support for these funds but said there should be a greater focus on educating young people before they get addicted.

Simonaire proposed a similar bill last year that was passed nearly unanimously by the Senate but was not voted on in the House of Delegates due to the early ending of the legislative session amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s bill is identical to the amended version from last year, according to Simonaire.

Maryland voters approved of legalized sports betting on the ballot in November. Simonaire told the Capital News Service that he hopes for his bill to be voted on in the Senate by the end of January.

Read more here: https://cnsmaryland.org/2021/01/21/g...-high-schools/

[PROFRBcom]

I think gambling education is a good thing.

However, first, I think basic mathematics should be taught, followed closely by personal finance. Hell while we are at it, let us go back to the old school and teach students personal responsibility as well.

[Sherlock]

I misread "I think gambling addiction is a good thing". I would agree. At least for me.

Gambling education is a bullshit. No one can be educated in gambling. If money is invested that the dumb people will understand that they will not get rich in casino or poker, they will just go gambling elsewhere: buying random stocks or crypto or simply anything they do not understand in other words a niche where they are not educated. The princip of gambling is to hope to get rich by something I do not understand but I can pretend that I do. As a side effect gambling is relatively high taxed usually, so any state that is diverting people from classic gambling to stockmarket is losing part of the taxes. The same taxes that states need to maintain the status quo by supporting the losers of society, which are more or less from the same group as gamblers.

Also I do not agree that people should be taught math or finance. It is like teaching poker players how to play the poker. The question is: why? Then the game of society, that will be always that there is a few winners and most losers will end just at high stakes. I mean if everyone can count, if everyone knows that credit is here just to keep masses in slavery, if everyone knows that hopes are bullshit and what counts is just a hard work - how would be the society? I think we would immediatelly start to kill each other because the illusion that we are some peaceful society would break up. It would be clear that we all are just struggling for survival and the best way how to minimize the colateral damage is simply to accept some nice lie, like that we all profit from economic growth or in this context: that the gambling is just innocent fun.

(I read something similar on some leftist server where was written that the racial problem now is not that there is the racial struggle, but that the old equillibrium, where the minorities tolerated certain degree of disadvantage and the majority was givin certain degree of advanatages and all were happy because all felt that it is best for all to pretend that we are all equal.)

So I think the best for meas rich, nongambler and gambling affiliate is to keep dumb people gambling. And I think it is best even for them. My only suffering comes when I need to communicate with such a person. Because then it is no stranger, he is someone close and I eat all my karma facing the hopeless hope of that person.

I think by educating people about gambling and diverting their lost souls to gamble on something that so far was not gambling at all, like errrr.... gambling on overleveraged hedge fund bets with trying to hit a jackpot called short sqeeze, is really not solving anything and making all aspects of life for all even worse than letting people to lose their wages at stupid slots. Either way, everything evolves and new and even more self-destructive gambling is here.

[PROFRBcom]

In the end, humans are both in competition with each other, as well as relying on each other to survive.

Increasing education and knowledge should improve the overall human condition.

If that means I take a pay cut because there are less stupid people, so be it.

Society should be a meritocracy, I do not argue against that. Smart, hard working, driven people should rise to the top and reap the rewards of owning and controlling more resources since they are better suited to use them, as well as earned them.

Get-rich-quick mentality is because people are desperate. I think world-wide quality of life could be improved with education much more so than ******* communism and socialism which simply rewards ignorance.