I always think it's funny which types of commercials play during certain types of podcasts. The online therapy site BetterHelp seems to be singlehandedly underwriting the industry, with ads on almost every type of show. The New York Times loves to promote itself, so if you listen to "Hard Fork" or "The Daily," get ready to listen to the same commercials over and over again about the dedication of Times journalists. Any podcast with a business or economic focus flogs products like "scalable enterprise solutions." (I don't even understand what most of these are. Accenture, you're wasting your money!)

And, of course, sports podcasts are supported largely by one industry: sports gambling. These ads are the worst of them all. After a bro reads some ad copy about parlays and bonus bets, I have to listen to somebody else — often with their voice sped up to what must be the fastest legally permissible speed — read disclaimer after disclaimer. The law dictates that the motormouth must mention each state's bespoke gambling addiction hotline: In Colorado, call 1–800-ADDICTED; in Indiana, dial 1–888-MYLIFEISRUINED. The cognitive dissonance of these ads is profound. I get 30 seconds of promises about the glamour and excitement of betting on sports through my phone, then I get 45 seconds of legalese about how this product could destroy my life.

For its part, the gambling industry claims that it has no intention of addicting customers or enticing them to gamble in a way that could cause them harm. They say it's just a fun way to get some skin in the game. It makes the banter better if you have $5 riding on the outcome of a game you're watching with your friends! And yes, there are many people who do bet occasionally, in small amounts.

But anyone with any sense knows that this isn't how the industry makes its profits. Everything from the apps' designs to their onboarding procedures (they often give you "bonus bets" designed to get you in the habit of betting frequently and opening the app often) makes a mockery of the little disclaimers you have to click through. These gambling apps, like so much else in our economy, are built to hook us and trick us into spending our time and money in ways we know aren't good for us.

But here's the thing that everybody knows and nobody wants to say: If everyone uses these services in a healthy way — i.e., not at all or in moderation — sports gambling can't survive. In the U.K., where sports gambling has been legal for much longer than in the United States and where gambling companies can (for a few more years at least) emblazon their logos on the uniforms of Premier League teams, the House of Lords commissioned a study about gambling-industry profits. The study reached a conclusion that should surprise no one: "60% of [the gambling industry's] profits come from the 5% who are already problem gamblers, or are at risk of becoming so." Though sports gambling is newer in the U.S., we're finding similar results here. A Connecticut report found that the 2% of people who are problem gamblers placed half of all the bets in the state.

Despite all of the disclaimers and happy talk from gambling companies and the politicians that enable them, anyone who looks at the issue carefully — or even engages their common sense for a minute — understands that the gambling industry makes most of its profits from addicting people and enticing them to behave in self-destructive ways. At its core, it's a morally indefensible industry.

The gambling industry may be our newest morally questionable, addiction-based industry, but it's not the only one.

The easiest addictive industries to spot are the ones that sell mind-altering substances that also prove life-altering for those who use them too much. In its heyday, the tobacco industry made its money by hooking people and lying to them about the health effects of smoking. The tobacco companies were not interested in attracting customers who might enjoy the occasional cigarette after dinner; they wanted to get people to smoke a pack or two a day until lung cancer killed them.

The alcohol industry functions the same way; a British study found that 68% of the industry's profits come from the 25% of British drinkers who drink in "hazardous or harmful amounts." If everyone used alcohol responsibly, companies would need to almost double their prices to remain profitable.

The finances of the alcohol industry rely on the fact that a certain percentage of people will use its products to excess, damaging their lives in the process. Even though beer commercials often end with "please drink responsibly," the industry knows that the numbers wouldn't work if people actually followed this advice.

The cannabis industry doesn't seem all that interested in occasional users, either. In 1980, the average strength of consumer-grade weed was 1.5% THC; now it's often over 30% in smokable products and over 90% in edibles. In a recent interview, Standford addiction scholar Keith Humphreys said that the newly unregulated cannabis industry is not built to serve occasional users who unwind once in a while. Its profits lie in keeping a small number of users perpetually stoned:

I'd say about 40 percent are daily or near daily users. And so that's where the money is if you're running an industry. And so you want to produce cheap high-strength product that that population will use and use and use and use. And I just think we're really going to regret that.

Lots of other industries rely on problem users, as well. The credit card industry collects the vast majority of its fees and interest payments from people with poor spending habits. These are people who have fallen for the creditors' seductive promises of cash back for purchases, low introductory interest rates, and balance transfer promotions. They rack up debt and find themselves in a situation that's very difficult to get out of.

And then there's the online world. Most social networks' business models revolve around attracting users, addicting them to their services, and then selling their users' manipulated attention and harvested data to the highest bidder. Most of them are especially aggressive about pursuing kids — whose brains haven't developed well enough to regulate their usage of these platforms — to sign up. The result is that most teenagers use Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram daily. There's a lot of evidence that this isn't good for them.

Social media companies made $11 billion off of kids under the age of 18 in 2022. I wonder if they feel good about the fact that so much of their industry's profits come from users whose lives are likely made worse by their products.

So what should be done?

You may be thinking by this point — "wasn't prohibition worse?" You're probably right. Certainly, alcohol prohibition was more trouble than it was worth, and the country turned decisively against it by the 1930s. And the "War on Drugs" resulted in unfair policing practices and a lot of unnecessary incarceration. The modern weed industry will probably needlessly ruin fewer lives, and ruin the ones that it does less decisively, than the "War on Drugs" did. Though sports gambling prohibition does not have the same unpleasant history, I'd imagine that most people are OK with sports gambling, too (although maybe we need a ban on the ads, if only for my podcast-listening experience).

But I'd also imagine that the business model of most of these companies — all of whom make their profits from "heavy users," AKA people whose lives are being harmed by these products — feels immoral to most of us.

We often view these choices as black-and-white: you either allow the stuff or you don't. But smart regulation — and a little bit of restraint from companies and institutions in these industries — might make a difference.

In the sports-gambling arena, we might limit the number of gambling advertisements that can air during a sports broadcast, especially since we know that these are heavily watched by kids. Or maybe sports gambling operations shouldn't be allowed to hawk their wares quite so aggressively to college-aged men, who are the people most likely to develop a problem. In states that have legalized marijuana, we might limit the amount someone can buy or the strength of the products they can get (only two states have regulations like this today).

It's probably possible to develop an economy that allows people the freedom to access certain potentially addictive services and substances without the marketplace becoming a free-for-all where giant corporations ruin lives to maximize shareholder value. Right now, we're nowhere near that.

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