I'm not sure why the BBC World Service has only just picked it up, but the stories about the healthcare lottery in Oregon remind me of a something said by a representative of the gambling industry the other week, to do with bookmakers starting opening over Easter, on a day when there was no racing in this country (Good Friday?) - that gambling was now a "mainstream leisure activity".

No.

Horse racing, football - they're mainstream leisure activities for which gambling is certainly an adjunct (significant for some people, admitted) but a mainstream leisure activity in its own right? OK, if you count in gambling in the form of the national lottery then maybe but I can't see that bookies should be allowed to use that as an excuse.