I think gambling is no different from drugs and it is devastating for the life of anyone who is involved.
I am very upset with every gambler or junkie, but the truth is that there is huge demand and money only in selfdestructive areas of life. One can be only hustler or loser.
I also despise gambling marketers who say that gambling is ok and it promoting gambling is the same as marketing for common goods. It is not. I do not care what anyone says to other folks around, but if there is an online affiliate who needs his own deep assurance that he is not doing something bad... I can not stand it. Gambling is bad/destructive, people do not want to do bad things, but life is not that simple.
Promoting (bad) gambling is for me simply less wrong way of living than staying poor and bitching how cruel the life is, but it is a dead end. Delivering goods to bored people on their selfdestructive way.
Other than analogy with drugs comes to my mind money lending. It is the same. Selling at high price some dream of happy life to weak people that can not bear the real life that is about hard work and where the hardest workers, who go against their own desires, win. So yes, I am involved in lendingclub as well 
I do not have a moral problem to do evil things, but I have a big problem with humanity as general. I simply can not stand common people, who bet 10 dollars and hope for huge win and talk about some idiotic stuff. Thank god for technologies and ability to live in many countries and not to be involved so much. I must admit that lurking stupid people to gambling or loans makes my mind cooler and therefore my hobby is not to be a serial killer or so: because I can see stupid people ruining themselves with stupid decisions and that is much more cruel than some kind of murder.
If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.