Today, there are battles in different countries about whether gambling should be allowed or criminalized. I think gambling is a vice and should be criminalized because the disadvantages outweigh any potential benefits. Gambling addicts are known to commit crimes to pay debts or have mood disorder which most time causes violence and strain in relationships. Gambling increases poverty as the poor are the most likely to gamble away what little money they have. The lure of big money has pushed many gamblers to steal. Some have even committed suicide causing indelible pains in the minds of others.
A lot to unpack here. First of all, gambling is a broad term and could include a lot of things, e.g. is poker gambling? Are charity fundraising raffles gambling? Is it gambling when you happen to have and advantage over the house or a positive expected value bet opportunity?
But assuming we're only talking about the type of gambling when odds are always set in favour of the house and players are expected to lose long-term. Sure, we could ban such, but it's very likely to backfire badly. The idea that if you take the gambling away, all the degenerate gamblers will just magically turn into financially responsible citizens is naive. They'd be likely to replace gambling with something else.
Remember that the vast majority of people who engaged in gambling activities are not addicts who can't control themselves. The ones affected are usually people who have some sort of psychological issues, e.g. being addicted to a dopamine rush etc. If you take gambling away from them they'd jump onto some other unhealthy outlet.
There's also a wider issue with what we call a "nanny state" - a governing style that sees people as children who need to be told what they can and can't do. Generally speaking, it doesn't tend to create strong and responsible individuals. It also creates an impression that anything that's not prohibited by the state must, by definition, be good.
I'm not 100% against the idea of prohibiting certain things though. People are not perfect and there are IQ/temperamental differences between different populations. So if there's something that has a huge negative effect on certain population and it's evident that people are not able to cope with it themselves - than it's justify to ban such thing.