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I question whether there’s a difference between addiction to drugs and addiction to gambling. If gambling induces an endogenous release of dopamine at a level commensurate to the release of dopamine from cocaine, then there is literally no reason to treat cocaine as “more addictive” than gambling. It’s the same addictiveness. One involves cognition, but that doesn’t alter the addictiveness.
Every child allowed to play a modern video game is being trained for a life of gambling by way of lootbox mechanics. It’s really the ultimate disproof of liberalism. We shouldn’t give people free choice where (1) they lack wisdom to discern the complicated costs and benefits, (2) their instincts overrides rationality. That’s because the choice is not actually free. It’s either coerced by an illusion or coerced by an animalistic instinct.
My first instinct was that drugs categorically different because they cause physical dependence and withdrawal symptoms. A quick google search tells me that gambling withdrawal is a thing, but all the sources are treatment centers, and all the symptoms are psychological. Withdrawing from amphetamine left me pretty much non-functional for weeks. I doubt gambling can cause that sort of nervous system damage.
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The argument perhaps goes that you can mentally train yourself to resist the effects of a given stimuli when the source of the neurological effect is entirely local to your own brain. End of the day, you can make a 'choice' to stop pushing the button.
But there's no training yourself to resist the introduction of exogenous drugs.
I'd object to the use of the term 'coerced' here, but otherwise mostly agree. I think its mostly based on the idea that they are not psychologically or philosophically prepared to give 'informed consent' to behaviors that have complex long-term implications. They literally cannot comprehend the effects, so while they can 'agree' to the terms, the consent lacks the actual 'comprehension' which is necessary for someone to truly consent to and accept the risks of a given transaction.
And the world has only gotten more complex, not less, so normal legal standards around 'age of consent' are, arguably, entirely outmoded for addressing this issue.
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