Stop Predatory Gambling
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Billionaire casino operator concedes the technology is not good enough to prevent young people from gambling online
by Les
Sheldon Adelson, the world’s richest casino executive, said this week he opposes online gambling because he rightly says the available technology is not good enough to prevent young people from making wagers on the Internet.
Other casinos operators like Caesars and MGM continue to ignore this reality in their multimillion dollar push to get Congress to legalize online poker. Of course, government would be a full partner in the profits of any legalized internet gambling program.
Government’s predatory gambling program is already led to an epidemic of serious gambling-related problems among America’s youth.
New York State government issued a stunning report showing 10% of adolescents in the state currently have a gambling problem and an additional 10% currently are at risk for developing a gambling problem. That means over 300,000 adolescents in New York State either have or are at risk of having a serious gambling problem.
A report from Loma Linda Medical School in California showed at least one out of every five young people has a serious gambling-related problem, up from one out of every ten in 1988. The prevalence rate of gambling among the young is now 80%, almost double the rate (45%) it was in 1988.
Government’s predatory gambling program is one of the biggest public policy failures in the last fifty years and the impact it has had on kids stands perhaps as its most glaring example. Legalizing predatory internet gambling begs the question: why expand a failed policy?
Beyond Control
How absurd . . .
Online gambling advocates tell us there is no way to stop online gambling. In other words, it can’t be controlled or regulated.
In the next breath, they tell us we need to legalize it so we can regulate and tax it.
The sad thing is the number of people who follow this “logic.”