What Are The Social Effects Of Gambling?

Legalised gambling or illegal gambling for that matter does create jobs; it brings in foreign customers, provides support to the community through various charities and provides a means of recreation and entertainment.

On the other hand it creates the problem of compulsive gamblers such as Dostoyevsky (12 million in the US alone according to Gamblers Anonymous), diverts funds from family, healthcare and charities, leads to broken homes and increased crime. People fall into debt and in several cases resort to crime.

Gambling has been around since primitive man as he sat casting bones or sticks into the air as dice. Nero who fiddled while Rome burnt is recorded as a compulsive gambler in history. And the American Colonial army used funds raised through lotteries to fund its campaigns. All of these facts however do not make gambling any more or less acceptable. Whatever the effect of gambling isn't it still organized by church groups in the form of bingo?