Gambling leads to the disintegration of families  Gambling can have a devastating effect on families. The most obvious effect is financial as one partner uses all their money on gambling the other needs to support the whole family or the gambler may even gamble away joint savings. Psychologically there is a relationship between gambling and various psychiatric and alcohol disorders. This is also an impact on friends, who do not want to be tied into supporting gambling financially or even just emotionally. Lesieur and Custer estimated that for each problem gambler there were 10-15 other people adversely impacted by the gambling of that person.1 As with drugs, it is harmful to the individual concerned and their family and friends, and it is better to ban gambling to stop people getting started in the first place.  1 Shaw, Martha C. et al., ‘The Effect of Pathological Gambling on Families, Marriages , and Children’, CNS Spectrums, Vol. 12, No. 8, 2007, pp.615-622.