By the end of the twentieth century, gambling in the public mind had moved away from being associated with immorality, personal deviance, and crime and had become a major socially acceptable form of entertainment. At the turn of the twentieth-first century, lottery and casino gambling are the prominent forms of legal gambling in the United States, and there is no indication that this trend is slowing down.
The factors contributing to increased gambling include the perceived need by governments for lottery revenue to avoid raising taxes and to stimulate economic growth in distressed areas. Also contributing are the efforts of gambling entrepreneurs in the private sector and the simultaneous development of new forms of gambling technology, principally electronic gaming devices.
The private gaming industry and state governments trumpet gambling as exciting entertainment that also brings the benefits of more jobs and lower taxes. However, gambling is not solely a societal plus. When gambling is legalized and made more accessible, the number of people who try it increases and a certain percentage of those new gamblers who are vulnerable to addiction develop a problem. Social costs of pathological gambling, such as addiction, bankruptcy, divorce, and crime have been found to be severe in clinical samples of pathological gamblers.
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