Are we any better than drug dealers?

[Viscant]

The second graph has very much to do with sentencing and how we're dealing with drug offenders, both violent and non-violent. I won't turn this thread into a political debate but that graph doesn't exactly help the point it was going for.

Anyways on the topic of drug dealers. The common perspective people are having is the one drilled into our heads in 7th grade health class of the dealer giving you a break at first or even for free trying to get you addicted and then charging you through the nose when you couldn't break your habit. That's all kinds of wrong for so many reasons.
First off, modern day dealers aren't smart enough to have a business plan in place. Second off that business plan wouldn't even work because of how easy it is to get drugs these days. In any major city you can get anything you want and anyone even beginning their stay in the throes of addiction would know how and where to get the right price. The old stereotype of dealers as active sellers is so wrong these days.

In that sense I think poker players do have more in common with dealers than most of us would like to admit. Everyone knows that your money comes from those who make bad decisions. We tag and mark our fish as they keep coming back and keep losing money. For all these losers, this money has to come from somewhere. Most of us sit at tables with people who lose hundreds of dollars a day. These people aren't all rich executives who don't miss it. You have to come to grips with the fact that some people online, probably many of your favorite fish are just human beings with problems.

It's just a question of whether or not you have a problem with that. I'll tell you this. There's a fish who I particularly enjoy tormenting on Absolute. I search tables for him when I log on and he's good to drop a couple hundred today. He doesn't know why he loses always telling friends (not surprisingly, he has many online!) that he doesn't know why the cards never go his way. It might have something to do with him chasing inside straights for 3 bets repeatedly but I won't be the one to tell him.
Anyways, as he loses, he gets agitated and his play deteriorates into him swearing and getting himself up into a great lather. If he ever asked me what he should do, I would be honest with him and tell him to quit poker and never look back. His life would clearly be better without all the stress and hate that poker brings out of him and his life would CERTAINLY improve with an extra 5000 in his pocket, which is what I've personally seen him blow through in just a month of playing with him.
But it's much like how you all feel about telling others about 2+2. When they're ready to better themselves, they'll go to the right place. Until then, what they do is their business and not mine.