Governments around the world like to show off their power and dominate their citizens by banning anything they don't like. Recently in India, the government has proposed to ban cryptocurrency, giving the flimsiest of the excuses. The reason is that they are afraid that popularity of cryptocurrency will weaken their control of the population. In the third world countries, many of the regimes would like to keep the populations under complete control, and that's when we see bans like the one for gambling which we have seen in Thailand.
Government will do everything behind their power to make sure that they are in full control.
It's always that way, they are keeping their power as they don't want to see that their citizens are doing something behind them, in the case of illegal gambling, it's better to sit upon and find whatever suitable solutions for best benefits by both the government and the people behind this business instead of suppressing why not try to find the proper way to both have compensation in return.