Prohibition would move gambling to operators who answer to nobody

The argument

A second argument against a ban concerns what would replace the casinos. Opponents argue that the demand does not disappear with the venue, and that people determined to gamble would move to unlicensed premises and to offshore websites that accept customers wherever they are. Those operators conduct no age verification, honour no self-exclusion, offer no complaint procedure and may simply decline to pay out, and the customer who is cheated by them has nowhere to go, since the transaction itself is unlawful. Opponents argue the harms the ban was meant to address would be worse in that setting. A gambler in trouble at a licensed venue can be refused entry under an exclusion scheme, encountered by trained staff and directed to treatment, and the operator can be penalised for taking their money. An illegal operator has every reason to extend credit and no reason to intervene, and debts owed in that market are enforced privately. On this account prohibition does not remove the vulnerable gambler from the market; it removes the protections around them and the record of their having gambled at all. The wider consequences are also pressed. A prohibited trade is funded in cash, pays no tax and tends to be run by people willing to break other laws, so banning casinos converts a supervised and taxable business into a criminal one and removes the revenue currently used to fund treatment and enforcement. Opponents accept that gambling harm is serious and argue that this is exactly why the activity should be kept where it can be watched, since a regulator can impose conditions on a licensee and can impose nothing at all on an operator who is already acting unlawfully.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Proponents of a ban argue that this reasoning would preserve any harmful trade, since a black market can be predicted for anything prohibited, and yet prohibitions do reduce participation by raising its cost and inconvenience. They point out that an unlawful venue cannot advertise, cannot occupy a prominent building and cannot recruit the casual customer who walks in, so the illegal market that follows a ban is smaller than the lawful one it replaces rather than a direct substitute. They also argue that the tax and treatment funding point is circular: revenue is being used to repair damage the licensed trade is causing, and a society that stopped the damage would not need to collect the money to address it.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] A black market can be predicted for anything prohibited, yet prohibitions do reduce participation by raising cost and inconvenience, so displacement is not equivalence. [Rejecting P2] An unlawful venue cannot advertise, occupy a prominent building or recruit the customer who walks in, so the market that follows a ban is smaller than the lawful one it replaces. [Rejecting P3] The appeal to tax and treatment funding is circular, since the revenue repairs damage the licensed trade is causing and a society that stopped the damage would not need to collect it. [Rejecting C] Keeping the trade visible is only an advantage if the trade should exist, which is the question at issue rather than a premise.