Let's keep this conversation productive. I don't read OP's comment anything like your response seems to imply.

While I don't think OP's point about morals is relevant here (they vary widely from culture to culture), equating the stock market to gambling misses out on a lot of nuance. Your average 401k retirement fund is going to outperform your average gambler 100% of the time over one's lifetime. Long term investments also tend to not prey on addictive patterns of behavior.

I personally think for a society to function well, it behooves ourselves to recognize when there are certain patterns or behaviors that are self destructive if left unchecked. I feel addictive drugs and gambling fall into this category. That's not to say banning this behavior is the right call, but there's a lot of space to explore productive policies between full on bans and anything-goes.

That's a completely false equivalence, and an uncharitable interpretation of what I wrote.

The stock market is gambling only for fools, while sports betting is gambling for everyone. False equivalence.

It really depends how you use it.

Put your 401k in to a global index and come back in 45 years? Yeah that's a false equivalence.

Take out a bank loan and roll 0DTE options? That's 99% the same as sports gambling for me.