[angry young man]

I don't think the morality of the group of players as a whole is at issue here. We're talking about the proffession's contribution to society.

And as for the athletes do bad things poker players don't argument, a couple of the best poker players I know have sexual morals that are pretty reprehensible, they probably haven't slept with 600 women but if they were famous enough to have young girls throwing themselves at them everywhere they went I don't doubt they would take advantage. I don't know any that use drugs but I'm not part of the drug culture so I really wouldn't know if they did, perhaps if some guy beating the 20-40 game at the Commerce becoming addicted to coke would sell papers we'd hear more about it. And speaking of things damaging to the body, how about obesity? I sure know a lot of poker players guilty of that and I'm pretty confident that's at least as bad as for you as occassionally using pot.

As for why poker isn't a respectable passtime; it's gambling and people have been taught from early on through cartoons, sitcoms and every other bit of conditioning that we can throw at them that gamblors always lose and people who gamble a lot are addicted and are destroying their lives.