FARGO — Had a friend comment the other day that almost everything in the country the Mob once controlled is now merrily endorsed by the government. Booze, drugs (weed, at least), gambling. All legalized and generating cash for the coffers.

The Sopranos still control prostitution in certain locales, but with skeezeball Matt Gaetz headed for the U.S. Attorney General’s office it might only be a matter of time.

Booze is booze and weed is meh — they both bring their share of problems, obviously. The one to watch, the one that’s going to start breaking up families and causing endless heartbreak, is the gambling.

You want an Old Man Yells At Clouds Hot Take? That’s it. There are going to be millions of young men driving off the financial cliff because of sports betting.

Young dudes wrapped up in sports, endlessly pumped full of betting chatter by TV networks and online sports sites, with gambling apps available on their phones and therefore always at their fingertips, with the sites offering “free” money to get started gambling like a smack dealer offers samples to build a customer base. What could go wrong?

There are literally entire TV networks named after gambling sites. ESPN has its own sports betting wing. Entire segments on talk shows are about gambling.

Yes, yes, yes. We know. Sports gambling has been around forever. The Black Sox of 1919. The college basketball point-shaving scandal in the 1950s. NBA referee Tim Donaghy in the 2000s. Heck, Las Vegas.

I could name some names of people you’d recognize right here in Fargo who are known to be or said to be huge sports gamblers.

This ain’t new.

But the ease for the Regular Joe to drop $100 here or $500 there on an NFL game or six, or a couple of dozen college football games, or a half-dozen prop bets … woo-eeee! Couple taps of the fingers, enter a credit-card number, a couple more taps and the game is on. No need to have your friend put you in touch with his friend who knows a guy who knows a guy — it’s all on your phone!

There are signs already where this is heading. In a column at the Minnesota Reformer website lauding the state’s legislature for thus far resisting legalized sports betting, columnist J. Patrick Coolican cites studies that show early effects of sports gambling.

A UCLA/USC study found that legal online gambling led to “a roughly 28% increase in bankruptcy likelihood and an 8% increase in debt collection amounts.” It also showed a drop in credit scores.

A Northwestern-led study found “heightened financial instability as households run-up credit card balances and more frequently overdraw their bank accounts” related to legal online sports gambling.

Well, duh.

Of course, all legal gambling affects low-income households disproportionately. Easy money, right? A way out of poverty.

But Old Man Yells At Clouds is here to tell you: This is going to hammer young dudes at all income levels.

How many wives have no idea their husbands have betting apps on their phones and are laying down thousands every month?

It’s. Just. Too. Easy.

We all make decisions. Free will. We drink. We puff weed. We put down a few bucks on the Vikings to cover. Abusing any of them can lead to problems.

Old Man Yells At Clouds just has a feeling about this new sports betting world. It’s all intertwined, it’s all incestuous, it’s all omnipresent.

It’s all right at your fingertips, 24/7.

Let’s check back in 10 years and see how Old Man did. Betcha he’s right.

Mike McFeely is a columnist for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. He began working for The Forum in the 1980s while he was a student studying journalism at Minnesota State University Moorhead. He’s been with The Forum full time since 1990, minus a six-year hiatus when he hosted a local radio talk-show.