I feel a sense of crisis over the current situation in which many people are addicted to gambling and commit crimes. Illegal online casinos must be eradicated.

Hey Noriko, how about we get rid of all the legal gambling like pachinko, horse races, boat races, bicycle races, all which can be bet on just using a smart phone!

Illegal online casinos must be eradicated

Good thing Japan plans to open actual physical casinos in a few years, that way be can be legally addicted to gambling (aside from all the other legal ways currently allowed described by MarkX above).

Addiction to gambling will not stop if you ban any gambling option, legal or illegal. Addicts will just find something else to bet on. The problem lies with the individual who is addicted, and whose addiction of choice is gambling.

Concentrate on the addicts if you want to help them. Find the underlying reason why they embrace their addictions and give them the personal understanding, support and skills to turn away from it.

Blaming the thing a person is addicted to - gambling, drugs, cupcakes - is to misunderstand the problem.

But hey, analog gambling and new casinos being erected in Osaka? It's all good then, eh, Noriko?

Addiction to gambling will not stop if you ban any gambling option, legal or illegal. 

It won’t stop completely, but if you want to control the spread of this addiction then I think its absolutely necessary to ban it. People don’t just randomly become addicts. If the general public is constantly exposed to gambling options then way more will become addicted to it than would if those gambling options either didn’t exist or were diffucult to access (and therefore fewer were exposed to it in the first place).

But hey, analog gambling and new casinos being erected in Osaka? It's all good then, eh, Noriko?

Its ridiculously unfair to suggest, based solely on a comment that happens to be related to online gambling specifically, that this person supports casinos.

She made this comment because her NGO happened to have recently released a report specifically on the issue of online casinos. Her organization has investigated and written about the problem of gambling addiction associated with Osaka’s planned casino which you could easily find if you Googled her before making such an idiotic comment about someone who seems to actually be making an honest effort to help people dealing with gambling addictions.

When I working the oil rig platform in Arafura sea this one bloke would always get bets daily. He use to get on the service ship Tugs etc. Get on the radio and send his bets to a contact in code. It took years for the supervisors work out what he was doing. So even pre internet Gambling addicts find a way to get their daily fix.

I have avoided gambling in my three-score and ten-life.