There was literally the exact same claims being made about kids being turned in to gamblers by pinball games decades ago:
“New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia was responsible for the ban, believing that it robbed school children of their hard earned nickels and dimes.[41][42] La Guardia spearheaded major raids throughout the city, collecting thousands of machines. The mayor participated with police in destroying machines with sledgehammers before dumping the remnants into the city's rivers.[42]”
I don't think it is the same though. With pinball you pay 20c or whatever, and you get to play the game. That's it. It's like paying $100 for an entry ticket into a bike race - you pay, you get to do the activity, the outcome is "random" in that it only depends on your own skill and external factors. With sticker packs the contents are truly random, there is no skill involved, you literally don't know what you are buying.
Pinball games at the time often paid out prizes and didn’t always do so based solely on skill. The shift towards the modern idea of what pinball machines are like today was a reaction to laws threatening to ban them.
Fair enough, but in that case it's a bit disingenuous to say those claims were being made about "pinball games" without qualification, because what you describe is not what someone today[0] thinks of when you say "pinball".
0: citation: myself and gambiting and barneygale at a minimum
“New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia was responsible for the ban, believing that it robbed school children of their hard earned nickels and dimes.[41][42] La Guardia spearheaded major raids throughout the city, collecting thousands of machines. The mayor participated with police in destroying machines with sledgehammers before dumping the remnants into the city's rivers.[42]”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball#Pinball_and_gambling