As it stands today, individual states are free to prohibit or practice gambling within their borders while significant regulations and limits are placed on interstate and this activity. In recent years, online gaming has seen harsher regulations. With the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIEGA), it was not explicitly banned but rather it was online financial transactions that were outlawed. This meant that all online financial ibcbet transactions from gambling service providers were now illegal which resulted in many offshore gambling operators excluding US customers from their services.
Existing in this legal grey area, it is no longer a question of if online gambling will enter the us market but when and perhaps how. As recently as this month, three states have legalized online gambling and plan to begin offering bets by the end of this year. Naturally, a gaming firm in Las vegas known as Ultimate Gaming was the first to offer online poker but for now restricting it to only players in Nevada. New jersey and Delaware have also legalized online gambling and so far ten other states are considering legalizing it in some form or another.
Frank Fahrenkopf, president of the American Gaming Association has said that “Unless there is a federal bill passed, we are going to have the greatest expansion of legalized gambling in the united states. I don’t think that’s what anyone intended, but it is what we’re seeing. ” This poses a lot of questions and of course concerns for many existing commercial casinos as well as American policy makers. Will legal online gambling mean fewer people in brick and mortar casinos? Will this create a new source of revenue at the state and national level? What about taxes and regulations? An increase in gamblers?
Many people including Arnie Wexler, former chairman of New Jersey’s Council On Compulsive Gambling has voiced concern that with all the good this could do to generate income and revenue for individual states there could be problems with an increase in compulsive gambling. There is particular concern regarding social media in the us as some places like Zynga have already begun taking real-money bets.
It’s a question that’s come up repeatedly for discussion in Congress, and things are serious enough that legislation is actually being considered to legalize Class III gambling, the kind that they usually like for online gambling outlets – poker, blackjack, betting and roulette. Of course, lots of people are really encouraged by where this is heading – they love gambling, and they wonder why the government should stand in the way of people being able to run a little organized entertainment. And they hope that the government could get off their back once and for all. Those who are against this move sees the very involvement that the government has in the problem to be a sign that gambling is not entertainment – that it is an activity that comes with considerable baggage of social harm.
As minor a kind of gambling activity as these games seem to be, you do have to admit that no one mostly ever tries to kill themselves over non-gambling debts, or tries to run away from town or steal from their company. These happen so very often with debts that come out of online gambling, that one is forced to wonder whether this might be an activity that is irretrievably mired in something much worse than entertainment. The truth is, gambling is an activity that attracts terribly addicted people; other forms of personal entertainment usually do not land one in terrible debt. You may certainly consider online gambling a right to freedom of expression you hold that shouldn’t be tampered with. If really online gambling were just one more kind of entertainment, wouldn’t it be worth it to keep it away from the country simply for the several lives it would save, and the families it could keep together?
It is difficult to comprehend how online gambling can actually be be this dangerous; the fact is, when you have it on offer all the time in your own home, the ability to get addicted and to game yourself out of house and home is an ever present threat, and it can turn into the worst kind of gambling ever – even more serious than heading out to Atlantic City every weekend.
The problem with online gambling over the real world equivalent of it is, there is hardly any way that these businesses can be supervised by the government for fairplay. You could not leave it to the gambling website owners of course, because they could easily profit from defrauding the player. And most of the time, these websites are all in specific foreign countries where there are no laws that govern this kind of thing. But do you know what – Doyle Brunson one of the world’s biggest stars in poker, in his book, says that even the highest level of poker professional goes completely broke several times in his career. It’s just a part of the lifestyle. You have to realize that the gambling industry is one that deals in $400 billion in turnover worldwide. You wouldn’t want half of that to go out of the country if online gambling were legalized, now would you?