Abstract
Since 2018, state legalization of sports betting and the industry’s corresponding proliferation has driven an epidemic of youth addiction. Current state legislation and regulations do little to combat youth addiction. Many legal scholars emphasize the value that a federal regulatory regime would provide to reign in youth sports betting. This Note explores the value that state and local government can have in the sports gambling space. To illustrate the unique importance of state and local legislation and regulation of sports betting, this Note analogizes to another addictive product with a history of youth addiction: nicotine.
Nicotine has been a regulatory target of states and localities for decades. By investigating the analogous histories of the nicotine and sports betting industries, this Note highlights three main advantages to allowing states and localities to regulate an addictive product: speed, proximity to constituents, and the ability to experiment with policy innovation. At bottom, this Note asserts that regardless of the prospect of federal sports betting legislation, state and local governments must remain empowered to legislate and regulate sports betting.
Citation
Matthew Connor Flink,
Supervising the Omnipresent Casino: Evaluating the Role of State and Local Regulation in Stemming Youth Addiction to Sports Gambling,
75 Duke Law Journal
951-992
(2026)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/dlj/vol75/iss5/3