United States Congress to Make Decision on Online Gambling

Submitted by Gary on Mon, 2010-04-12 at 17:52

United States Congress will hear two bills that will affect online gambling in the US. Those introducing the first bill are hoping to delay the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) by one year. This would make it come out June 1st, 2011 instead of 2010. The second bill would regulate and legalize online gambling and would therefore eradicate the UIGEA.

The UIGEA states that financial institutions are forbidden from processing payments between US citizens and online casinos. The new bill would require banks to screen business customers and reject those with the intention to operate an online gambling venue illegally.

Those in favor of legal online gambling have described the UIGEA as a law that just won’t work. They believe that it is impossible to stop all Americans from gambling online and believe that energy would be better spent protecting people from fraudulent operators; something that regulation would help to overcome.

The UIGEA has been deemed difficult to police because there is no way to stop online gamblers from the US from joining offshore casinos. This lack of control effectively leads to an increased number of gambling addicts that the US government has no way of knowing about. It is hard to fix a problem when you don’t know where it stems from. Regulated online gambling virtually eliminates this problem because it gives adults the freedom to do what they want but also gives the government a chance to monitor patterns, thereby making it easier to help.