In Our Country When You Turn Eighteen

In our country when you turn eighteen, it means that you have the right to experience personal freedom because you are considered an adult. There are only a few things that you can’t do when you are eighteen, and that is only because alcohol is involved most of the time. There are many other reasons why I believe that a eighteen year old should be able to gamble.

First of all, when you are forty years old then you usually have a wife and kids which you must feed and supply for, but when you are eighteen you usually have money to lose because you don’t need to support anyone usually but yourself. Think about it, would you rather see a forty year old man lose all of his money or see a eighteen year old man lose all of his money? It’s pretty obvious that you can do more damage gambling when you are older than when you are eighteen. I just don’t see the difference in the decision making between an eighteen year old and a twenty-one year old person, it doesn’t make much sense. I’m sure there have been situations where a father has lost a lot of money and wasn’t able to feed his family because of his gambling addictions, but that would never happen to an eighteen year old because they usually don’t have a family to support and even if they lose some money they will be able to survive. When it comes down to this gambling topic, the decision to let an eighteen year old gamble should be chosen on whether or not the person can make its owns decisions wisely, and if an eighteen year old can make a decision on a president or even go to war, why not be able to make a decision on a card game or slot machines?

I can think of two situations in someone’s lifetime which has to do with gambling. First, there was an eighteen year old who makes about twenty five thousand dollars a year at his job. He bet on basketball and football games all year around and lost ten thousand dollars. Even though that sounds horrible the eighteen year old can still survive on the fifteen thousand dollars he has left. On the other hand, a thirty five year old man bet all year around, every weekend down at the casinos in New Jersey. He makes about thirty five thousand dollars a year at his job. He also has a wife and two kids to support. This year alone he lost twenty thousand dollars at the casinos in New Jersey. This sounds horrible and is just as bad as it sounds. Now the man has money left over after losing, but you have to remember that he still must support his family. My point from these two situations is that when you are eighteen you really can’t ruin your life too much, but when you are older you can not only ruin your life but also your family’s life too. Another thing that is good about an eighteen year old gambler is that if he loses money at a young age when he doesn’t have much, it may teach him a lesson and he will not gamble when he is older with a family to support. For example, if an eighteen year old loses five thousand dollars when he only has seven thousand he will still survive. After this experience maybe the person will learn not to gamble, and it is better to learn that when you are younger without any priorities such as a family to raise. Decision making plays a huge part in gambling, and I strongly believe when you are eighteen you are old enough to make any decision wisely.

Another good thing about an eighteen year old gambler is that when you are eighteen you can’t drink alcohol. Alcohol is the main reason why people lose their money. When people go gamble when they are drunk their decision making is very poor. An eighteen year old doesn’t have to worry about poor decision making due to drinking because it’s not allowed. If you think about it, whenever you are at a casino they supply your drinks most of the time and that isn’t because they are being courteous, they just want you to get drunk and go lose your money. I think casinos don’t want anyone under twenty one to gamble because they can’t get drunk and lose their money due to poor decision making.

I have a story which tells me why it is better to bet when you are younger than when you are older. My grandfather started really betting when he was about forty years old. He started off with horse races then moved to cards and now he even bets sports. I asked him a few questions to fully understand what he thinks about gambling. His exact words were “If you are going to bet, its better to bet when you are younger than when you are older with a lot of money”. He told me that he wishes that he had bet when he was younger so he would have learned his lesson before he got a lot of money. He said that when you are older you have more money to bet with and that is not a good thing, because instead of betting fifty to one hundred dollars you can bet a thousand to ten thousand dollars because you have