And I’m saying there’s no evidence for that. Illegal gambling arrest rates haven’t significantly changed since before Kalshi and Polymarket existed, so there’s no reason to believe that banning them would change that. Combined with other states’ examples wherein banning gambling outright didn’t cause significant social harms (e.g. organized crime), and I think the burden’s on you to show why CA is special and would suffer from a gambling ban.

Like, are there some gamblers who, if it were made illegal, would do it illegally in harmful ways? Yes! Are there enough such people that the social harms of banning gambling would be significant? I don’t think the data bears that out. This isn’t prohibition; this is something that has already been widely proscribed by law in the past without serious negative consequences (other than missed opportunities for riches on the part of the gambling companies that pushed to relax those prohibitions over the last decade).