Over the past two years, Minnesota has been getting a real-time lesson in that tension because of lawmakers’ decision to legalize marijuana.

“We’ve done a lot of things wrong. You can watch the rollout of the pot business here and several things like that where we’ve thrown caution to the wind,” said Annette Meeks, a Republican former state official and longtime opponent to sports betting legalization in the state. “We say, ‘We don’t want this trend to pass us by,’ and in the meantime we hear about the problems other states are having.”

For the past few years, the legislative debate on sports betting focused on the minutiae of pleasing various constituencies that have a financial stake in the outcome.

Now, the vibe is shifting to whether we really want this at all.