"Prohibition is morally appealing yet administratively futile." Discuss with reference to lotteries and gambling regulation in India.

Gambling is one of the few "vices" Indian law chooses to regulate rather than extinguish: the Lotteries (Regulation) Act, 1998 permits State Governments to organise lotteries subject to statutory conditions [1]. Prohibition satisfies moral intuition, but because demand survives the ban, its administrative record is weak.

Why prohibition is morally appealing

• Constitutional morality: the Supreme Court has held gambling to be res extra commercium — not trade or commerce entitled to the ordinary protections of commercial activity [3].
• Regressive harm: lottery spending absorbs a far larger share of a poor household's income, so "revenue" is largely collected from those least able to bear it.
• Conflict of interest: under the 1998 Act the State is itself the organiser [1], while Kerala's lottery revenue touched ₹9,972.97 crore in 2019-20 [4] — the seller is also the referee.
• Parliament accepted this logic in the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, which prohibits all online money games, of chance or skill [5].

Why it proves administratively futile

• Demand outlives supply: US Prohibition (1920–33) left drinking intact, transferred supply to criminal syndicates and forfeited excise revenue.
• Bans only relocate the ticket: Section 5 lets a State bar sale of other States' tickets, but cannot stop those States printing and selling them — supply stays legal at source [1].
• Capacity deficit: offshore platforms, mirror domains and informal payment channels make online enforcement reactive, which is why the 2025 Act needed a dedicated Authority and blocking powers, operationalised through the Rules, 2026 [5][6].
• Fiscal self-defeat: a ban surrenders the States' taxing power over betting and gambling under Entry 62, List II [3], handing the margin to untaxed operators.

The choice, therefore, is not between morality and revenue but between visible, auditable supply and invisible, criminal supply. The way forward is accountable regulation: separating the regulator from the organising department, mandating published draw audits under the Lotteries (Regulation) Rules, 2010 [2], capping advertising and draw frequency, and using registration-and-blocking tools against unlicensed platforms [5]. Regulation that is transparent protects the vulnerable more effectively than a prohibition that exists only on paper.