McKay Coppins

You know, he would talk to parents whose sons have gambled away their college tuition checks and they would tell him, please do something about this.

He would talk to politicians in the UK and Australia, which are countries that are kind of a few years ahead of us in terms of legalizing and popularizing online gambling.

And they would all tell him, you need to crack down on this now.

We wish we had taken this issue more seriously a few years ago.

But then once he actually talked to his colleagues in Congress, he would kind of be met with blank stares.

They thought it was like a nice pet issue for him, didn't seem like it was super important.

And he really struggled to gain traction with his legislation.

I don't understand this.

Completely.

I mean, I was actually pretty baffled by this myself.

And I was baffled by why more politicians haven't taken this up as a cause.

Clearly, gambling addiction is increasing in America.

But, you know, why Congress hasn't taken it more seriously?

I mean, I think there are a couple reasons.

One is that it might be a generational issue.

This is an issue that I think a lot of people thought that we had already solved as a country, right?

Gambling addiction, of course, exists.

And there have always been people who ruin their lives with this vice.

But, you know, again, up until a few years ago, it was relatively contained.

You had to go to certain physical locations to gamble or you were doing it on the black market.