> I'm from the UK[..] I think the region you're in has a strong impact on what the police's priorities are, due to different leadership.

Totally agree! The few times I compare ads on television from Netherlands vs England the difference is huge. There's a huge amount of gambling advertisement in England. Advertising regarding something that's addicting is often quickly restricted in The Netherlands. Secondly the loan advertisements. In Netherlands the advertisements have to mention that it costs money (seems super obvious) plus there are restrictions on the interest rate. Seems in England companies can do whatever they want.

If a lot of people get into money problems it'll affect everyone (stealing might go up, or they'll not pay back loans, etc). It is so strange that this is allowed.

> If a lot of people get into money problems it'll affect everyone

This is called "negative externality". Another example is junk food. It does affect everyone when people are unhealthy (health care costs for instance).

> It is so strange that this is allowed.

I think the US have ruled that advertisement is protected by freedom of speech. Actually some people get extremely defensive when talking about restricting advertisement (nanny state argument...).

Advertising is indeed covered by the first amendment. However, various US Supreme Court decisions have also confirmed that the government can make restrictions on misleading commercial speech and that, in general, commercial speech is less protected than speech more broadly.

http://www.lawpublish.com/amend1.html

It’s not just the UK in Europe though. Sweden is worse for gambling advertising than the UK ever has been, at least 2/3rds of evening TV adverts here are for online casinos.

In Sweden I was surprised at the the gambling games aimed at kids at fairs/theme parks. Roulette/wheel of fortune gambling to win big bags of sweets and chocolates. In the UK I think you'd at least have to introduce an element of skill into the game. (Also I've never seen so much candy for sale as in Sweden! It's amazing Swedes have any teeth left.).

Swedish kids are in general only allowed sweets on Saturdays which helps. That actually leads on to a pretty dark story too long to write in this margin, but Wikipedia has a good summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipeholm_experiments

> I see these car sweepstake scams all over the place

Are you sure it's the same scam? A car sweepstake is a real thing outside of the particular scam mentioned.

I haven't checked the T&Cs, but it has all the same traits - set up in an outlet village, car being presented with "you could win" banners, aggressive salespeople pestering passers-by to sign up with their personal details. The aggressive sales tactics especially are a bad omen in my eyes.

I've seen something like this in shopping centre in Ireland.

But the car manufacturers logo was all over it, which makes me think it's legit.. but it is always there.. which is suspect.