The Impact of Gambling in America

The Impact of Gambling in America The impact of gambling on the United States carries both positive and negative effects into our society and communities. Gambling is a leisure activity that usually provides excitement and fun for its players. Gambling also brings tremendous amounts of money into the economy and provides employment. American cities such as Las Vegas and Atlantic City thrive off of the gaming industry. Sure, gambling can be fun and exciting, but at what point does that fun activity develop into a pathological problem? I will contend that the harmful side- effects of gambling far outweigh any positive aspects. Pathological gambling can destroy families, careers, and lives. The reason why casinos are so successful is because their customers lose money while playing their games. Gambling is a broad subject in definition and is also known as “betting”. It is defined as “any behavior involving risking money or property on the outcome of a game, contest, or other event in which the outcome of that activity depends partially or totally upon chance or ones ability to do something” (wikipedia.org). In reality, someone could bet or gamble on just about anything. For example, I recently stumbled upon an online gambling site (www.bodog.com), which features a section where you can wager on who will win the reality shows on television. Gambling is most prevalent in card games, slot machines, dice games, sports, and horse racing.
Gambling and the gaming industry in the United States have come a long way since their early beginnings. According to historical records and archeological evidence, gambling has existed throughout the ages of most civilizations. Anthropologists agree that data collected in the 20th century implies that gambling took place within a large portion of the greatest societies to have ever existed. For example, gambling artifacts have been recovered from ancient China, India, Egypt and Rome dating as far back as 2300