Everyone needs to be aware of habit forming behaviour whenever they start to pick up a new hobby, even computer games can become quite addictive over time without any gambling involved - just the happiness endorphins that are triggered after a difficult win is achieved. As long as people keep gambling in proportion and low level, it's not necessarily a harmful activity. Once people think they have some strategy to beat the house long term or thinking that after a sequence of failed bets the house suddenly owed them a win, then they are slipping into dangerous territory and probably need to stop entirely.
I think that it depends on the gambler/gamer/etc. Someone can stop himself, someone else will gamble until he lose all his money. This situation is the same(in my opinion) for most part of the hobbies - in some moment it becomes too expensive and it doesn`t matter what resource do you spend - money, time or something else.
The problem with gambling that it is the main thing we see.
Hobbies that take all your time and attention are full. But gambling differs from it very much, although it is not immediately noticeable. The fact is that playing poker, roulette, slot machines, bets - from the outside look like just a pastime. But the fact is that many weak people begin to count on the fact that these hobbies will solve their problems.
"Now I'm going to win a few thousand and quit my job, buy a car, etc." Such are the thoughts of weak-minded gamblers.
There is nothing wrong with hoping for it, but you can't live only by it. There are a lot of different things that also give hope for a comfortable future, but they do not require such investments as gambling, because they depend more on the skills of the individual.And it is unlikely to cause addiction and obsessive thoughts.