For decades now, Australia’s poker machine industry has hammered home a number of self-serving points. Don’t blame us, they say. We’re simply providing a legal form of entertainment that most people enjoy without harm. It’s the few who can’t control themselves who ruin it for everyone else. And hardly anyone who plays the pokies really has a gambling problem anyway. What’s the big deal?
The big deal is that it’s all a lie. All of it. Everyone who regularly plays a poker machine suffers as a consequence… every single person.
