Ads for online gambling are harmful to Iowans

I work at Walmart in Marion. I love my job. On my days off I usually catch up on laundry and ironing my partners' shirts for the following week. We're fortunate in that money isn't an issue in our lives.

This morning as I was ironing Greg's shirts for the week, I had the local news on. Every time it went to a commercial break one of the commercials was for an online gambling website.

I grew up in a family where my dad was a gambler. He gambled everything he had. There were times he'd be gone for days. He'd later show up with a grocery bag full of currency and tell my mom to count it as he'd go off to bed. There were also the times he'd gamble his paycheck away.

There were eight kids in our family. We were dirt poor. I'm struggling to understand why its acceptable for broadcast television to give airtime to a medium that is so destructive to families. I'm of the age where I remember cigarette commercials. Did we not learn anything from that era?

The only time my father ever called me to wish me a happy birthday was in the last year of his life as my sister was driving him to a casino and reminded him it was my birthday. I loved my father. I resented his gambling addiction.

Robert Randall

Marion