Last week, PocketFives brought you a feature article about the U.S. Department of Justice inching closer to an agreement with Chris Ferguson, whom the poker world largely hasn’t heard from since Black Friday. Another former industry frontrunner who has seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth is Annie Duke (pictured), who resurfaced twice in the past week with highly visible media spots.

Duke appeared on The Young Turkslast Monday and on Thursday popped up on Fox Business on a spot with John Stossel. The latter segment was introduced with discussion about Super Bowl sports betting, ripe with screen shots of Sportsbook.com, Bovada, and TopBet. Stossel, sporting a pretty baller mustache, then asked average Americans in Times Square whether sports betting should be illegal in a scene reminiscent of Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking.”

Flash back inside the Fox Business studios, where Duke was introduced as a “former professional poker player.” According to the Hendon Mob, she hasn’t cashed in a live tournament since December 2011 and has cashed just once since December 2010. Her association with UB made her a target in the online poker world and she was last seen on a bus trip of America called The Unchained Tour.

Alongside Duke was Patrick Basham, author of “Gambling: A Healthy Bet.” When asked about his book, Basham elaborated, “[Gambling is] healthy for the individual. It’s healthy for society. But, you haven’t heard this narrative before because the research money goes to those people who say, ‘Society is going to hell in a hand basket.'” Basham continued by saying, “It’s wonderful entertainment. It’s wonderful recreation. It helps our brains and it helps our hearts.”

Duke made it a point to argue that the social benefits of gambling aren’t necessarily relevant to the legislative effort on Capitol Hill, where debate often devolves into moral spats: “When people say they want to ban [gambling] because it’s immoral or because there’s some sort of harm to society… When you start arguing the other side and say there are good things about gambling, you’re lending weight to the arguments that shouldn’t be germane to the legislative effort.”

Duke pointed out that problem gambling is not as widespread as its counterparts in other industries: “Less than 1% of the people who engage in any kind of gambling activity have a gambling problem, and that’s compared to alcohol, where 7% to 9% of people who use alcohol have issues. It’s a really small problem. Even if those people are having problems, they’re making those choices for themselves as consensual adults. They’re not hurting anybody.”

Why would such a big fuss be made over problem gambling if the epidemic is not widespread? Duke told viewers, “They do a thought experiment: ‘If we have gambling on the internet and it’s in people’s homes, our society will fall apart.’ Why haven’t they done the same thought experiment with online shopping?” Basham chimed in by saying, “The extent of the problem is massively overstated and we never hear about the positive side of gambling.”

Duke added that overused anecdotes were also common in legislative discussions about gambling: “We’re not supposed to legislate by anecdote. There was a story about a kid who lost a lot of money gambling online and robbed a bank, and this was the anecdote they were slinging around and they were blaming it on internet gaming. When we look at the U.K., which has very good statistics on this kind of thing, pre-gaming being introduced to post-, there wasn’t any increase in the percentage of gamblers who had issues.”

Basham then dropped one of the most compelling arguments for the expansion of gambling that we’ve heard in a while: “Gamblers are more sociable, more enabling, more involved in their community, and more likely to donate to charity.” Duke was the runner-up to Joan Rivers on NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2009, raising over $1 million for the Refugees International charity in the process.

Then, back to sports betting we went. Although groups like the Poker Players Alliance have tried to distance our industry from gambling on sports, most mainstream programs consider sports betting and poker one in the same. Duke contended that professional leagues should embrace gambling rather than shun it: “No one will watch football without the spread. It’s published in USA Today. For them to say that gambling is somehow hurting the sport – that’s a completely specious argument.”

Duke also took aim at state lotteries, which keep a significant percentage of gambled funds: “The commercials and the billboards for lotteries are aimed at poor neighborhoods and poor people… There’s no competition on the lottery… The Government owns the lottery, so they can take 50% on the dollar. If there were competitors on that, I guarantee you’d get a higher rate of return.”

Click here to watch Duke’s Fox Business appearance.