If legal addiction was a corporation, shareholders would be laughing all the way to the bank. That's because addicts, legal ones of course, are a cash machine - especially in this state.
Governments love addicts.
They provide a very healthy stream of money into consolidated revenue via taxes that pay for everything, from pollie perks to pensions. It allowed a proliferation of pokies, first to the clubs, then to pubs, and those Taj Mahals of addiction, the casinos. Addicts love addiction, they can even sue those responsible for producing the products of their addiction in the first place. And on the subject of litigation, let's not forget the lawyers. Ah, the honourable legal profession, which rakes in a bundle each year helping addicts bite the hand which fed them, defending the companies they sue, and protecting governments from the fallout of laws they helped draw up or advised on, and so on, and so on.