Aside: The people who like prediction markets get quite annoyed at that.

"prediction markets" -- what a loaded term. Do you consider financial futures markets to also be "prediction markets"? As I understand from financial research, it has been shown time and time again that financial futures do not predict future performance. In my mind, "prediction markets" are nothing more than legalised gambling on an (election) outcome. To be fair, most retail (non-institutional) traders of highly leveraged financial products (futures & options) are the same: They are gambling on an outcome, not investing or hedging risk. Finally, I am not saying it should be outlawed, but there should be some very strong warnings before trading the product -- as there are for futures & options.

>The brain has some flaws that are very hard to overcome. Addictions are some of them.

The majority of people don't feel victim to addiction, it's a minority of people who are prone to it. Everyone shouldn't have their freedoms restricted just to cater to the more weak-minded.

A popular position perhaps, which is why you can still go gambling while 'weak-minded' children cannot.

Personally, I hope we come to protect the vulnerable regardless of their age.

You don't really seem to understand how the legal system works, don't you?

Laws are there to protect powerful people (in many cases), to protect the majority (hopefully most cases) and to protect the vulnerable, sometimes from themselves (in a decent number of cases).