Skip to footer

A dubious drive to legalize online gambling

A Senate hearing focused on regulating Internet gambling – even though it remains banned interstate by Congress. Such backdoor maneuvers toward legalization only reveal the commercial interests pushing this wrongheaded move.

|
AP Photo
A casino industry representative watches an online poker game during a 2011 industry conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.
  • By the Monitor's Editorial Board

Everyday Americans are not banging on the doors of Congress asking it to legalize online gambling. The country is already awash with casinos and state lotteries. Yet much of the gambling industry, a few gambling-dependent states like Nevada, and a handful of lawmakers seem eager to find any excuse to reverse a federal ban set down in 2006.

The latest example was a Senate hearing Wednesday. It was titled “The Expansion of Internet Gambling: Assessing Consumer Protection Concerns.” The hearing was cloaked to look at the alleged need for Washington to regulate Internet gambling – even before it is legalized nationwide.

Lawmakers expressed concern over the few states that are moving to allow online wagers for only their residents. Such intrastate gambling was allowed by the Obama administration based on its 2011 re-interpretation of the 1961 Wire Act.

In April, Nevada began to offer Web-based poker for its residents. Delaware has approved online gambling, while New Jersey, worried about the decline of its Atlantic City casinos, is not far behind with plans for online gambling in coming months – even on sports. Similar steps are being weighed in a few other states.

The hearing focused on the alleged inability of such states to deal with any spike in the number of underage or problem gamblers as well as fraud or money laundering through online gambling sites. But if Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware have not learned by now how to deal with these problems, how could a new and massive federal regulator do any better?

Any newfound concern about the security of online gambling should begin by maintaining the federal ban. The Justice Department confirmed that it can enforce the ban. In 2011, it cracked down hard on foreign companies offering offshore gambling on poker to US residents. (The agency had no problem seeing poker as a game of chance.)

The pressure on Congress to lift the ban comes from commercial interests that don’t see a very lucrative market in just a few states with online gambling, especially if those states only tiptoe into this market by offering just poker first.

And Congress should not be tempted to end the ban in order to gain tax revenue from this new industry. The cost to individuals and the economy by an expansion of gambling will likely be more than any contribution to the US Treasury.

The Senate hearing did expose one potential problem. It hinted at the draconian infringement on privacy that might be needed to screen teen gamblers. Every sort of government database could be tapped to check the age of online gamblers – something on the order of the electronic surveillance done by the National Security Agency.

The steady expansion of legalized gambling in the United States must come to an end. It is not a wealth creator and it perpetuates the belief that one’s life is determined by luck. Congress should learn to live with its decision in 2006 that Internet gambling is just not worth it.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to A dubious drive to legalize online gambling
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2013/0718/A-dubious-drive-to-legalize-online-gambling
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe