Learning gambling at least has some real educational merit. Risk management, understanding probabilities, statistics, and how to quickly estimate under pressure are all generally useful skills. I recall hearing that the science of probability was basically discovered by one of the Bernoullis who had a gambling patron.

I suppose someone with enough gumption could learn useful skills like sales, marketing, loss prevention, and customer retention from drug dealers too, but that’s a whole level of seedy past legal gambling.