They bizzarely claim here that we have provided insufficient definition, because we have not provided word for word dictionary definintions of the words “gambling” and “The West”. We suspect from their articulate argumentation that they do grasp perfectly well our definition of "gambling, in all forms, from bingo to Russian Roulette, should be banned. And yes, that does include the national lottery. And church raffles." and that they're really just having a wee bit of a moan. If it was a genuine mistake however, we're very glad websters managed to help them out, and apolagise for not providing a link to that fabulous publication in our opening speaches

With regards to their point about the validity of Russia as an example. Firstly, we only really mentioned Russia so we could make proper tea jokes. Did you not see that theme through our first set of points? The kind of mockingly socialist one? Secondly we would suggest that side opposition actually read the Reuters article which they have cited as it doesn't say what they have tried to pretend it does.

Let us work through the points which they made about this.

---------------------------------------------------------

1. That Russia is setting up this system in an attempt to revitalise certain remote areas.

We think the fact that they are forcefully shutting down a nationwide industry is not something that you do to increase investment in four small towns. We would point out the fact that, as referenced several times in their article, the government of Russia has been pushing for this ban for 3 years now on the grounds that it is "to protect the health of society". This would imply that their goal is to get rid of gambling in Russia. Concessions such as allowing it in four far flung places are the sort of thing you see in any government where special interests get to play. We think if the Russian government were really taking this massive action in order to increase investment to these remote areas then they might have invested in some of the infrastructure necessary for these areas to host gambling. We think the fact that the government, as referenced again by their article, has taken absolutely no action to actually set up these gaming zones would imply that their biggest priority is in shutting down gambling not boosting investment in these areas. We did also say that we would go one step further - we were partly using the Russian article just to make communist themed jokes - did you see the one about proper tea?

2. That Russia is only doing this because they don't like Georgia.

We would point out that this article quotes Georgian casino owners as making this claim, and in fact the context of the quote is such that the lack of credibility of this argument is highlighted. Since our opponents don't understand this however, here is our response.

Of course the casino owners are going to say that.

----------------------------------------------

So their two problems are, well, wrong.

But here's where it gets really great. The article which they have cited references problems with addiction, organised crime and casinos taking advantage of people. We note that these were also the points which we made and so we thank our opponents for citing a source which agrees with us.

Moreover the article points out that many addicted gamblers in Russia are welcoming the move, quoting one as saying "Maybe this is all a good thing. I'm a family man and I come here every day and lose all my money. I'll be happy to see them go". We remind our opponents that this is, again, in agreement with the argument which we were making.

So we think Russia (and also now Ukraine) is a perfect example of a state recognising the problems of gambling and acting to fix them. The gambling culture is something which is relatively new to Russia since it came along with the fall of Communism. The Russian people and government therefore have a knowledge of what society was like before and after Gambling, as a pose to our Western view where gambling has become ingrained in society. As such they are clearly better placed to judge whether gambling is good or bad for society and so their example is probably one worth paying attention to.

p.s. We note again that we got this point from the article provided by side opposition. If they are still unclear on the reasons behind the Russian ban then we recommend that they google "Why did Russia ban gambling". We found such a search to be highly informative.

p.p.s Ooops, just noticed that there's a section stuck on the end of this section by Venezuela attacking us for underground gambling. We're not very sure what this has to do with an argument that we thought was about quoting dictionary definitions so we'll refer you to the response we made below when they repeated this point in their fifth point.

Although actually hang on a second:

1. We did talk about underground operations - see our second point on guys with dodgy moustaches and stuff.

2. We did propose a mechanism for dealing with them, you repeated it for us in the sentence after your criticism of us. We'll arrest people who break the law.

3. We haven't provided evidence about what will be a deterrent in our hypothetical future world because we don't have any precedence upon which to do so. We don't know what level of enforcement will be required but if the punishments we initially hand out don't work then we'll make them harsher. If our Police don't initially catch them then we'll devote more manpower to the cause. They attack us for not telling them what level of enforcement we will use. We respond by pointing out that we'll use whatever level of enforcement is practicably necessary. One would have thought such things were self evident.

Right, so its old and entertaining. So is the tradition of the coliseum, though last time I checked, the TV show Gladiators did not involve lions or re-enacted sea battles.

Firstly, we think the harms to others could possibly of being shown in our organised crime point. Or the mention of the family's of gamblers. Their solution was divorce. We think that’s the equivalent of amputation, and to extend the metaphor, think it'd be better if the limb never got infected in the first place. By gambling.

Moreover, in a stunning piece of statistical barraging, opposition attempt to throw up a smoke-screen to try and convince us that gambling addiction isn't really a major factor in marriage break-up “hey, there’s loads of reasons why couples break up” they seem to tell us. Well yes, there are lots of reasons why couples break up, but we say that this is a bad thing and that some things weigh more on marriages than others. For example being critical of your partner's lack of Miss Universe-like attributes may be somewhat less concerning than bringing financial Armageddon down on your family and wasting away your children's college fund. We say one of these is more likely to cause divorce. We say one does. Venezuela say, unlike them, we are unable to provide lots of silly statistics about the correlation between bankruptcy and divorce. Anyone can jump onto google, enter “bankruptcy”, “divorce” and “statistics”, but it doesn't necessarily prove anything without analysis and this is what we'd like from side Opp on this point.

Secondly, we think the states often limits you liberty to harm yourself. Like consensual cannibalism, that’s banned. So is pyramid selling, even if you think its a great idea to help dispose your assets. We also make you wear seatbelts. We have lots of other rather annoying health and safety laws to stop you doing anything stupid, despite your ‘liberty‘.

Why is this? We think as a citizen you recognise that occasionally you are incapable to see what is in your long-term interest. As an individual, your view on the world is limited compared to the view of the state. How does this analysis apply to gambling? We think individuals have hope, hope that they will win. They don't see the extent of the assets that they're losing for their 'happiness'. The state can see that the majority of people will lose, despite their misconceptions. The state does not ‘hope’. We recognise that a minority will win, and that the site of that minority in society gives hope to the majority that they too can be the next lottery winner. But the state knows that most of them will not be, and so should act to protect the majority.

Having dealt with liberty, lets move on to Canadian statistics (Don’t blame us, they started it!). For reference to your lovely readers, we’re taking this from the following article, that they also used;

‘http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001-x/75-001-x2003112-eng.pdf’

So what did they forget to mention? Lets give some select quotes;

“Compared with non-problem gamblers, those with
a problem had significantly higher rates of alcohol
dependence (15% versus 2%), psychological
distress (29% versus 9%), family problems due to
gambling (49% versus 0%), and financial problems
due to gambling (53% versus 0%).”

Hmm, financial problems. Those might lead to bankruptcy. Psychological distress is perhaps one of the main causes of suicide. And they cause disruption to the family environment, something we think the state should stop by removing the problem (gambling) rather than mitigating the effects (divorce). We may of lacked in the provision of statistics to back up our case, thankfully Venezuela have helped us out with a few links.

But, hark, we here the cry, these are only problem gamblers. What about the majority? Firstly, we say that the term problem gamblers certainly seems to indicate that the Canadian’s view this as an addiction. Oppositions statistics seem to be knifing their first point of rebuttal in the back. (The problem of running six points is that sooner or later, you’re going to contradict yourself) We think the American Psychiatry organisation might be arguing between the difference between endorphins and dopamine. Have a look at this;

http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mentalhealthinfoforall/problems/problemgambling.aspx

And if you goggle ‘Problem gambling’ you’ll find plenty more. We think this shows that society and particularly national health and support groups (although the quote is from the Royal Collage of Psychiatrists - obviously us Brits are slightly ahead of the yanks) realise that gambling can turn into a harmful addiction.

But its only 0.6%, that’s nothing right? Lets have another quote from the same article;

‘Where there is gambling, there will be people with
a problem.2 Of the estimated 18.9 million Canadians
who gambled in 2002, 17.7 million were nonproblem
gamblers, while 1.2 million (5% of the adult
population) had the potential to become problem
gamblers or were already (Chart A).’

To clarify the 5% figure just show with opposition’s 0.5% figure, what the article goes onto reveal is that the low and moderate risk segments have a high tendency to convert into problem gamblers. So this is a problem, that in Canada, affects 1.2 million people. We don’t believe that’s a small number, as opposition claimed. The benefits they list are happiness, enjoyment, experience of risk. Learning how to make good decisions.

What are the harms given by the article;

‘Of the 85% of problem gamblers who recognized
they had a problem, over half said they had tried
to stop gambling in the past year, but were unable
to do so.’

We think people can find their happiness from chocolate, play parks and puppies. If people can only get it from gambling, they’re addicts. You can experience risk by going on an rollercoaster, rock climbing or paintballing. The only mistake you can learn from gambling is not to do it - we think if gambling’s banned, its not a lesson you need to learn, much like you don’t need to ‘learn’ not to take LSD. Lessons about risk taking are better learned in a stock market situation, where knowledge is rewarded and ignorance punished. We say that gambling is like wearing a seatbelt, to ‘learn’ why not to do it is a traumatic process. Its better that the state simply forces the correct action upon you.

Opposition have argued that the Canadian government should screw over 1.2 million of their citizens so that the rest can occasionally have a good time. We don’t think the Canadians are quite so silly… And once again, we would like to thank our opponents for the statistics. :)

Ah, they said it was old in the point before this one. Oh, well, some more rebuttle of 'oldness'. I'm sure if I cared to look I could cite some sources proving that in Ancient Egypt they buried people alive, in Mesopotamia they executed the daughters for the crimes of their fathers, in Sparta - Greece they abandoned babies on the side of a volcano that didn't look very tough, in Rome they made criminals fight to the death in arenas for public amusement and in China the Emperor summarily executed people by having them crushed under an elephant when he was looking for amusement. Just because something was done a long time ago doesn't make it good.

Again, having already addressed risk in their previous argumen, we simply say that some risk is ok, where the consequences aren't particularly severe and where the victim isn't overwhelmingly likely to lose out (as in the examples they provided). Some risk is bad, like not wearing seatbelts.

As we have already pointed out in our response in point two their prohibition point is not actually correct.

Their example of California is contextually irrelevant. Again had they actually understood the source they have cited they would have noticed that it refers to English settlers bringing slot machines over with them . In 1800 California was a Spanish overseas colony still being formed from overseas immigration. We think realistically that immigration laws and policing are a lot more effective than they were back then in remote colonies. Moreover we imagine it's quite difficult to smuggle large numbers of slot machines into a country.

One of the issues with banning something is its abundance in other similar countries. Alcohol caused a problem because a) all other westerners could drink and b) drink was legal and freely available a few miles north in canada. If we banned alcohol in all western countries it would have a serious impact on alcohol consumption. Similarly we feel the same will happen with gambling and that the oppositions response to this was, whilst predictably obvious, a little naiive.

As for their final two points:

1. People will go abroad for gambling holidays.

Rich people will go abroad for gambling holidays, the groups in society most harmed by gambling are the young and the poor. Such groups won't be able to travel abroad.
Moreover just because something is legal somewhere else doesn't mean you should allow it when you consider it to be bad. Polygamy is legal in a lot of places. I'm sure if we legalised it then that would also boost the las vegas economy, as there would be more weddings, but we don't allow that because we think it's wrong, regardless of whether or not it would make us more money.

2. Internet gambling

The first thought here was to turn round and say no that's not true and cite my recent Masters degree in Computing Science as evidence that I know what I'm talking about.
Then it was realised that some proper evidence might be needed. They claim that banning internet gambling is impossible. We point out that the US Government has already done it http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3619311. The figures they quoted were from BEFORE the ban was implemented. Either they are trying to mislead us here or they are ignorant of the facts.
Either way we can ban internet gambling in the most part so this point of theirs is entirely irrelevant.

We're not sure what the overall point was here but if it was, as in the header, that it will cost us money then we're not really sure what to say other than, eh we don't care. It should be pointed out however that if Russia and Ukraine can afford it then so probably can most Western countries.

Unfortunately it seems that the opposition have divided these arguments to write between themselves, writing one argument each (often very, very well) but alas not done a very good job communicating with each other about what the rest of their case is.

In point 2 they claim that Gambling is an inherent right. If it's an absolute right, why should the government be regulating it?

In response to our second point, and this is the best one, they claim that the problems of organised crime are caused by over-regulation of the gambling industry: "It's the heavy regulation and politicization of the licensing that causes it to be a fertile terrain for irregularities". If that's the case why do you propose MORE regulation?

Obviously Venezuela's right hand isn't very good at talking to the left but we'll run with this as a stand-alone point.

But anyway, on to this counter proposition. I imagined myself doing a lot of things this evening but spending my time reading up on research from an Australian University about a possible new idea for regulating gambling wasn't one of them. Fortunately I had a deep fried mars bar and a bottle or irn bru to see me through the experience.

We would disagree with the implication passed that this has been widely implemented though, the examples referred to were small test cases and there isn't any widespread evidence as of yet that this policy works. Their claim that ‘but always improving the situation regarding compulsive gambling, which has lead to further enforcement of the scheme.’ seems to be a complete fabrication. What seems to be a theme through the document is that all of these schemes had easily exploitable loopholes.In all of the searching done on this subject there was one observation which cropped up all of the time: "this gives the least amount of help to the people most in need of it".

So why is this?

1. Not everyone is being rational when they take their decision about how much money to put on their BBC card. They might be drunk or depressed or in any number of vulnerable situations, which are the situations in which people most often lose out to casinos. Particularly with online casinos there is no way to regulate how rational someone is being in their decision when they select their BBC limit from home.

2. Gambling addicts will give themselves a really high setting on their BBC. Addiction is a 24 hour thing. At some point in their life they're going to realise, I might want to gamble lots later today, I'll get myself a BBC and set it's credit rating to whatever the maximum amount is, regardless of whether they have the money or not.

3. Addicts will ultimately end up sourcing fake BBC cards from elsewhere if they can't get their own to work - see organised crime point.

Indeed, this is a direct quote from the document;

‘37% of panelists shared cards. Card sharing occurred for periods up to one week at a time. Card sharing correlated to CPGI score (i.e. PGs shared the most). ‘
(pg refers to problem gambler)

If you care to read the document, and we would encourage you, you’ll find plenty more statements such as these. They’re very easy to find, they’re all in red font. And they all point out severe flaws in the systems adopted. Now what we’re sure of is that opposition could come up with a thousand more solutions to the problems we’ve pointed out. That is the nature of practicality debates. That’s why we all hate them, because they never end. Unless, you use principles. Now what we see here is that addicts in these studies always found methods of dodging the new regulations. Now sure, increasingly sophisticated systems can be used, such as fingerprint recognition. However, when you make it harder for the addict, that’s when organised criminals step in, to help you evade such measures.

Indeed, what’s the best possible outcome of this counter prop? People go to casinos. Some get addicted, as they can afford it under their BBC . Then oppositions mechanism steps in, so they can‘t gamble their house away. Their security measures are so magically efficient that they can no longer gamble legally. So they go to illegal casinos. Then they suffer all the harms mentioned in oppositions point entitled ‘Banning gambling is worse than the status quo’

Once again we see opposition try and deal with the wound, with confronting the knife wielding maniac. To solve the problem that they have seemed to recognise, we must stop them from becoming addicted in the first place, which can only be solved by removing all exposure to gambling.

As to their second counter prop of more regulation on marketing strategies we don't think this is that likely to be effective. We pointed out in our third point, as the opposition clearly didn't grasp, that the marketing isn't lying to people but misleading. This is already a massively regulated thing.

It doesn't work for two reasons:

1. The only real thing you can impose is that they don't lie, the point being that there are ways around marketing laws. Again referencing http://www.smartmoney.com/spending/rip-offs/10-things-your-casino-wont-tell-you-17277/ but also pointing out the free alcohol and fancy smells points about casinos finding other ways to manipulate you.

2. The people most affected by gambling are those that are least educated. It doesn't matter how many information leaflets you produce, a lack of information isn't the problem, it's a lack of understanding which is different.

Ah, running six points and the problems it creates....

'Prohibiting gambling would produce incentives for the establishment of unregulated illegal markets', we hear at the start of their opposite point. And yet they run an entire counter prop of incredibly strict legislation to introduce, that prohibits addicts from gambling. So we think the entirety of harms that they list will continue to exists, as addicts who can no longer legally gamble turn to illegal means. In fact, they get worse, as they now move into illegal schemes, and all the harms they entail. (Opposition have listed them, I shall not repeat.) As we have already rebutted their counter prop, I shall do no more here. However we would like to point out that their title for this point does perhaps refer to the opp line as a whole. It amused us.

'The existence of cheap drugs, such as crack, responds to the same logic.' So are they arguing we should legalise drugs? People would still get addicted, and still commit criminal acts to obtain funds to fuel their addiction…. Here, opposition have managed to confuse us.

What we will immediately concede is that we can do nothing for those already addicted with our mechanism. Some will turn to illegal operations and this saddens us. But we know in the long run, things will be better. This is because we think it’ll stop the creation of further addicts - we sacrifice the current generations for all of the future ones.

You see, when people first venture into gambling, they largely do so because of its respectable appearance. A small flutter at a blackjack table is a socially acceptable thing. Unfortunately, this is the first step to addiction. However, when this is now illegal, people never take the first step. They never enter into the illicit venues. Why is this? Because as first prop said

‘People who provide the service will automatically demand bigger returns that cope with the dangers of getting caught. Bigger returns are easily gain by lowering quality. In the case of gambling low quality reflects in rigged games and violence towards insolvent gamblers.’

This deters members of society from ever gambling in the first place. We would refer you to;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/eastenders/characters_cast/characters/character_george_p.shtml

I’m really, really sorry, this is probably the first time ‘eastenders’ has ever been used as a good example in a debate. For those of you who don’t know, it’s the most popular British soap. Now as the profile shows, George’s marriage with Peggy fell through due to his ‘dodgy dealings’ (can’t believe I’m typing this). The mainstay of these was running an illegal gambling den.

What point am I trying to make with the reference to popular culture? Well that is the point really. Popular culture. In, Britain, and the West as a whole, there is no glamour to illegal gambling dens, just as their isn’t to drug dealers. We think the fact that people, as opposition do, recognise the squalid reality of these places, deter them from entering. Unable to produce the glamour of the casino, punters realise that they will ‘always lose’. As no one ever enters these venues, they never have a chance to become an addict (or problem gambler if you will). Hence, although we may sacrifice the current generation, all future ones will be safe. That’s a price we will happily pay on side proposition.

We would also like to look at choice. When you go to a drug dealer, it is illegal, you have made a choice, an illegal one, and addiction is one of those consequence. Currently, with gambling, the legalisation sends a message that it is okay, acceptable. A valid choice, without the harms of addiction. Criminalisation sends the message that it is dangerous, you can become addicted and experience harmful consequences. Any people who now begin to gamble under our proposition will have chose to forfeit the protection of the state. And it will have been a ration choice - they knew it was illegal before they started gambling. We will still try to help them, but, using their liberty, they have now chosen a harmful situation, something opp believes is a human right to do. What we protect under our mechanism is the innocents, those who though gambling was harmless.

Now to go onto the stuff about taxes. Not so much fun it is. In the following g point we shall rebut it in more detail (once again, our opponents may be reusing a wee bit of material). So we’ll just start off with a light piece of wit, or perhaps slander. To cut the story short, gambling gives money to the state through taxes, lotteries give money to charities. Woop de doo. Taxes can be raised by alternatives means. A tax on gambling is just exploiting those who chose to gamble (Even if its on the casino, its ultimately from customer revenue). We think it might be fairer just gain that revenue from a national wide tax. What we would say about Casinos is that they are a service industry. They do not produce a good. The state does not gain any physical benefit from them. The only money they extract is via tourism. We think that tourism can be promoted by other, more legitimate means. Just as we would condemn underage sex tourism or drug tourism, we condemn tourism generated by gambling. Apparently Las Vegas has showgirls and rollercoaster’s. And Monte Carlo has a racetrack! We think development could be focused on those.

And with the charity stuff? I mean, really? If a girl guide goes around selling hash brownies, does that make it okay? Or if I donate the proceeds of child trafficking to Oxfam? The fact some of the money exploited off people goes to a good cause does not justify the act in of itself. We think the money can be raised by an increase of tax, which targets everyone equally, or maybe state run bake sales. Or events like comic relief.

http://www.comicrelief.com/

(Because you might need some)

Raffles can also be run in the same fashion as Methodist churches, where every ticket wins. Now isn’t that nicer? It’s certainly not gambling. And okay, so maybe our definition was wrong, and we’re not banning all raffles. Just the ones where only tickets ending in fives and zero’s win.

We think that the problem with only teaching abstinence is that frankly teenagers want to have sex. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163651/ - well worth watching) . Whatever you teach in school, there will come a point that the left field quarterback sees Stacy do a particularly revealing cartwheel and he’s gonna feel a tightening in his shorts.

We’re not sure the same applies to gambling. There is a natural urge to have sex, whatever you teach, or refuse to teach, people tend to figure out that tab C goes in slot B. (Occasionally tab C goes in slot A, but it’s a rarely repeated mistake). People don’t really have the same natural urge to gamble. Certainly I didn’t spend my teenage years lying in bed thinking about blackjack, until it got so bad I had to go to the bathroom and play a couple of hands.

In all serious, we think people have to have sex. Otherwise, they get frustrated. And society, and the human race, possibly might end. Plus it’d be dull. We think, on the other hand, the human race can continue without gambling. Teaching people not to have sex is a bit silly. Ban gambling isn’t.

In terms of teaching responsibility, with addictive substantives, you don’t give school kids cocaine and then tell them not to have any more, they might get addicted. The same goes to gambling, we think for the problem gamblers group, there isn’t a safe level of exposure, the only lesson to teach them is not to get involved in the first place - a ban works far better.

Right well there are really two points here. Despite being written into an essay they're basically saying three things:
1. You're going to fire a lot of people.
2. You're going to lose a lot of tax revenue.
3. The countries national lottery will no longer be able to raise money for good causes.

The first two we don't care about and the third is just a misunderstaning on the oppositions part (although we forgive them as such misinformation is peddled by most lottery organisers around the world).

1. This seems like a great point when you read it, casinos employ lots of poor people. Unfortunately it doesn't actually make sense when you think it through. Why is that? Because in order for casinos to make a profit they have to take more money off of people than they are giving back. The "poor" employees referenced in this section are minimum wage earners earning say $4 an hour. All of the earnings are going to the chief exec who is earning say $1000 an hour. What this means is that for every poor man that earns $4 in an hour, there are one hundred poor men losing $10 an hour.
Gambling helps some people but it hurts more. Governments have a responsibility to balance harms and protect as many of their people as they can. The balance of harms and therefore the greater good does not fall on the side of the employees here.

2. Just because something costs a lot of money doesn't mean that it is wrong to do it. The Welfare State costs a lot, we still don't mind paying for it. We would firstly point out that gambling revenue makes up a very small proportion of national income so whilst it is a lot of money we're quite confident most western democracies (being majoritively the largest economies of the world) will surive the loss, Russia and Ukraine both did, why can't we? Further to that realistically outside of the United States most countries don't have large locally domiciled gambling industries. In Europe the largest gambling industry by far is online gambling. Such companies are almost entirely based overseas now in places like Malta, Monaco and Gibraltar where they don't have to pay any taxes to anyone. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/aug/05/betfair-gambling-tax-offshore
Further to this it is unknown what the real net income for governments is from gambling as there is little reliable information on the resultant costs of dealing with the problems caused by gambling. A recent study highlighted the wider costs:
http://www.gpiatlantic.org/releases/pr_gambling.pdf
A notable quote being, "The GPI study cites evidence that the government’s estimate of gambling profits may be illusory,because it does not account for the higher health care, justice, social service, productivity loss,and other costs generated by problem gambling."

It should also noted as a side point that this study provides yet more evidence of some of the facts which we cited in our earlier case and which they rather incorrectly tried to rubbish. Those of gambling being directly related to bankruptcy, family breakdown, suicide and lots of other bad things that I can't remember just now.

3. Lottery. We've already dealt with why lotteries are a bad thing but to deal specifically with this point that they raise money for the country.
If it is important for a country to spend money on these things then the government should be doing it already. If it is short on funds then it should raise taxes by the $1 cost of a lottery ticket.
Such forms of gambling are disproportionately participated in by the poor, those with the desperate desire to win the jackpot. These people buy ten tickets for $10 whilst the rich buy one ticket for $1. What this means is that this apparently important national revenue scheme is using reverse progressive taxation. Our opponents advocate taxing the population to pay for important national projects, they just think the poor should pay more than the rich. We argue that such a principle has long been thrown out in every major western nation and that each should contribute according to their means.
Moreover if our opponents are concerned about spending money on these areas taxing everyone the $1 rather than getting them to play in a lottery would result in more money for the good causes that they apparently care so deeply for.

Team Venezuela have posted up a load of "benefits" that are gained financially from gambling. They have completely ignored the costs.
Their understanding of the nature of these benefits is flawed as we have pointed out.
Even if their argument had any factual merit though we would still reject it because "it will cost lots of money" isn't an argument not to do the right thing. Unless they can prove somehow that we can't afford to do this, which is clearly not the case, then their wider harms here are irrelevant.

Government and Society should not be making themselves rich off the back of other peoples misery. We stand to protect the vulnerable in our society, Team Venezuela stand to exploit them, but to then give them a lottery funded teddy bear in appology.

Oppositions point seems to be that once gambling was legalised in Russia, it spread wildly. We agree with this. However we think it was precisely because it had being legalised. Russians, who are used to social protections, provided by the state, saw that the State viewed it as harmless. So they jumped right in. Once states send the message that gambling is banned, we think they can go back to the state where it is viewed as a as a ‘very bad, bourgeois and unpatriotic thing to do.' Admittedly, this view may not be so popular outside of Russia. However we think those in the west will view gambling with the same distaste as any other form of organised crime. We already linked you to some lovely eastenders trivia....

They claim Russians ' took to it as we think most humans do: as an enjoyable outlet, a thrilling risk-taking activity.'. We would refer them to;

http://www.kyivpost.com/world/44366

'As gambling grew, so did the problems. The Russian casino culture quickly became synonymous with ostentatious displays of wealth and organized criminal activity. Compulsive gambling wreaked destruction on players and their families.

The evils of playing the odds are penned into Russia's collective consciousness. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote "The Gambler" in a desperate race against time to pay off mounting debts run up at the roulette wheel, vividly depicting a gambler's rollercoaster ride from exultation to despair’

What we find interesting is that ‘once gambling was legalised in Russia, it spread wildly.’ In this statement we find an implicit point that gambling was NOT wide spread whilst it was illegal. Indeed, Venezuela seem to be telling us that the most recent case of 20th century prohibition for gambling worked…

We think the loses are negligible. Taxes are merely a means of redistributing wealth from the people to the state. Gambling taxes simply affect gamblers, we think the state can recoup financial loses from this ban by more general taxes. They mis-understood the service industry analysis. The point is services industries do not create capital, they merely distribute it. The only way a country can gain a net boast in GDP by gambling is by tourism, otherwise they simply take money off their own people. We believe there are other forms of tourism - people still want to travel and go on holiday. If their unable to spend their money and time in a casino, they’ll spend it on plays, theme parks and deep fired mars bars (because yes, now they will all flock to Glasgow). The point is, gambling does not generate any wealth on a global scale, and so any loses will be local, with benefits felt elsewhere. (E.g, Monaco may be slightly worse off, but French ski resorts will benefit. And Monaco is rich enough. And we’re not sure what makes the citizens of Las Vegas so important that we can’t deprive them of some of their income.) If people wish to give to charities, there will be other means, like taking baths in baked beans.(http://www.clitheroeadvertiser.co.uk/clitheroenews/Clitheroe-pubgoer39s-baked-beans-bath.5582546.jp). We don’t think lotteries have a particularly special role in charitable donation, if anything, it merely serves to offset peoples consciences. Sure, the sate says gambling is bad and I’m losing my money, but hey, some of it goes to charity right? So its good in the end? The argument with the girl scout selling hash brownies was not age related, merely pointing out that if something is wrong, give a small amount of the financial proceeds to charity does not make it right.

Finally, they claim, ‘;So no, Future generations would not be safe from gambling, if anything, only a temporary hiatus would be achieved, and this future generations would be specially ill prepared to deal with gambling, as they would have no practice, guidance or state regulation to protect them from abuses.’

We’re not quite sure we understand this. (Indeed, the deep fried mars bar supplies are running low, we apologise for crankiness. And a haggis may of broken into the Irn Bru store, drunk half of it, before vomiting all over John’s bed. ). But we’re not planning on reintroducing gambling at any point, this is a permanent measure. And we’ll still teach kids in school the problems in gambling, just as we do in drugs. Indeed, now it’ll be easier, as they won’t be able to ask ‘If gambling’s so bad, why does granny always play the national lottery?’ As school children seem to be able to grasp the idea of a universal principle, we think our opponents may also be able to. (Sorry, but the haggis is now copulating with my chair leg,rage may be seeping in to this post).

In references to oppositions Elton John song, we would like to refer them to ‘Temptation Dice, by the The View, a decent Scottish band.

Side opposition really just don't seem to get it.

We don't care how much it costs. If it's the right thing to do, then it's the right thing to do. For the United States employing Armed Forces requires a lot of money and manpower. It would be a lot logistically easier for the US to become a pacifist nation. They don't because this isn't the major factor.

Opposition cites the example of drugs, there is a reason why virtually every developed nation bans drugs (even though it is costly and an underground still exists). Because drugs are bad, and if we can stop even one person from taking them then we have been successful.

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"As we have explained it is simply impossible to eliminat illegal gambling"

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We on side proposition would like to know exactly where it is that they explained this to anyone?

Every single school debater from the age of ten upwards is taught to say "prohibition didn't work in the US" verbatim in any debate on banning something. You need to actually provide some analysis of why the situation being talked about in the context being talked about would have the same result.

We pointed out to you that there are several aspects of prohibition in the US which are different from this:

1. Gambling is far less of a widespread social institution than alcohol.

2. We're banning it in all western countries, not just one.

3. Law enforcement is much more able now than 80 years ago.

We would finally like to make one last point on this. The Venezuela team repeatedly pointed out to us that there was virtually no gambling in Russia prior to gambling being legalised.

As this is the ONLY modern day example raised by anyone in this debate where gambling has been banned we see, YET AGAIN, all evidence pointing to the contrary of their assertion that a massive criminal underworld will develop.

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Why on earth they've wasted thousands of characters, repeating themselves over several of their arguments, outlining why crime is a bad thing we do not know. We don't disagree with any of their analysis about the harms of crime and so have no desire to engage with it.

To quote a gambling addict in an article cited by Venezuela "Maybe this is all a good thing. I'm a family man and I come here every day and lose all my money. I'll be happy to see them go".

Here is what we believe will happen.

We ban gambling. This will stop the vast majority of people from gambling. It will help some people who are currently problem gamblers to escape their addiction. It will not help all of them but it will help some. It will drastically reduce the number of people who start gambling in the future, thus having a directly proportional effect upon the number of people who end up being problem gamblers.

We don't claim this is a wonder drug that will eradicate the problem, it will however get rid of a very large amount of the problem. If you are faced with the choice of saving some people or saving no people, there is no choice.

Ah, like most things these days, our plan seems to be insolvent. As students, we hardly find this surprising. We're not sure exactly how our plan is lacking in cash assets, but sure an economic approach will no doubt help :)

'According to Mancur Olson's theory of Collective Action, this makes it easier for the suppliers to collude and create cartels, which in the underground gambling industry hypothesis would translate into gaining political lobby capacity for it to operate without being caught, increased judicial and policy corrupting capacity and larger strength and intelligence to fight enforcement mechanisms (violently... but we'll come to this later)'

We think this might of being slightly more relevant in the 1920's when it comes to violence versus the police. Indeed we think the only reason corruption exists in the west is because the legal cover casinos can give to organised crime. (legal companies can give party donations, etcetra). Once this is criminalised, we believe politicians and judiciary are less likely to wish to associate themselves with such organisations.

We think the key flaw with 1920's prohibition was the glamorisation of crime, many locals in Chicago viewed Al Capone as a hero, he often gave interviews to the local press. Thankfully, we have moved on in the 21st Century - been a gangster is no longer viewed as a romantic, or respectable calling. We don’t think that a large, ‘legalise cocaine lobby’ is currently in operation in the USA, despite the numerous criminal gangs involved. Finally, we disagree with their cartel analysis. Illegal casinos are still in competition with each other, criminal gangs rarely co-operate, this is most evident in the friction you see between drug dealers.

‘Into the demand side, it should be firstly stated that prohibition does not affect the preferences and tastes of people. In this sense, the impact over the demand will be associated with how sensitive a person's demand is to more risk at acquiring the banned good or service. In the frame of this debate, if anyone was to stop gambling because of the prohibition (assertion that we've sufficiently proven wrong through our case), it would surely not be the problem gambler, whose particular situation implicates a lower demand sensitivity to the increased and irrational risk’

From this we see that opposition realise that those who are not ‘problem gamblers’ will not enter into the illegal markets. Why, because of oppositions own words;‘Bigger returns are easily gain by lowering quality. In the case of gambling low quality reflects in rigged games and violence towards insolvent gamblers’ Rational citizens will not risk potential jail time for ‘happiness’, instead of holidaying in Vegas, they’ll go to Florida. They have no desire to subject themselves, or their families, to the tyranny of organised crime.

Therefore, non problem gamblers will stop gambling. They concede that this element of our mechanism is effective. Why is this so important? No one is born a problem gambler. It is a habit that has to be developed and the only way for this to happen is by exposure to gambling. This effectively means that in thirty years time, gambling will no longer be a problem for society. We use this to back up our argumentation;

http://www.psychology.org.au/publications/inpsych/gamblers/

‘The 'normal' gamblers are people that develop a problem from a positive reinforcement perspective, but don't have any pre-existing mental illnesses. "Usually they are people who start gambling because their social group frequents gaming venues, or they live in an area where clubs with gaming machines are common places to go out," Richard says. Psychological science suggests that that intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful type of reinforcement. In the gaming machine context, a person might have a couple of random wins and get a bit hooked on it - continuing to play in the expectation that they can win again. They are further reinforced to return by the social environment (relaxing music, attentive and obliging staff, free tea and coffee, inexpensive meals).’

Without the legitimate venues, we do not see problem gamblers arising.

We realise that we can do nothing new for current problem gamblers. This truly saddens us, but the point of this proposition is to stop the source of the addiction. For those who are already addicted, we will of course continue to try and help them re-enter society. A criminal deterrent is one way of doing this.

Finally, and we realise we’re now flogging the skeleton of a dead horse, (but what a lovely ringing sound it makes), we would once again highlight the oppositions counter prop. Here, the solution for problem gamblers is to also stop them gambling (with that complicated BBC stuff), so, by their own analysis, they concede that problem gamblers will also go into illegal forums under their alternative mechanism. The only difference is that opposition still allow problem gamblers to develop in the first place, by providing an attractive, legitimate venue. All so the rest of us can have a little fun….

These are the reasons why, when enforcing laws such as this you have proportional punsihments, punish the dealers a lot heavier than the users (as outlined in the mechanism).

This is an argument not against making gambling illegal, but against jailing those who gamble rather than fining them.

We are quite confident that our criminal justice system will welcome all advice in the future about the best way to punish all levels of offender. We don't entirely agree with all of the rather limited analysis of the failings of our prison system but don't think it's a particularly crucial issue right now.

Maybe a fine would be a more appropriate punishment. We don't know, we're not experts on rehabilatative treatment. We never outlined fixed punishments for crimes, we just started a debate about whether or not something should be a crime.

"Because prison is bad" isn't a reason why something should be legal or illegal. Ilegality is defined on the rights or wrongs of the action, not the punishment.

As such we have no idea why the Venezuelan team have made this point and see no need to engage with it.