Conyers to Propose Internet Gambling and Regulation Study

The United States Congress is currently debating a bill that would essentially prohibit the use of credit cards to gamble on the Internet. Proponents of this legislation claim that online gambling sites are currently being used to launder money for terrorists and other criminal organizations. Those who support this bill also claim that online gambling sites provide easy, unregulated access to underage children and problem gamblers.

However, opponents, including Conyers, claim that the bill, in its current form, will not stop the millions of Americans regularly using the Internet as a means of placing a wager. Rather, opponents say, this prohibition would merely drive the online gambling industry underground and into the hands of corrupt merchants. To address these concerns, Conyers has argued that Congress should examine whether strict state regulation and licensing could ensure that gaming websites play fairly and that dishonest operators are shut down immediately. Conyers' proposed Study Commission would be charged with finding out whether the same conditions and regulations that allow for safety and fairness in land-based casinos could logically be extended to Internet-based casinos.

Even if conceptually it is possible to develop safeguards for the online gambling industry, there are benefits land-based casinos bring to a community that are inherently absent from Internet gambling. Perhaps the most glaring example of these benefits is jobs. Michigan's casino industry currently creates, at a minimum, 20,000 jobs statewide. Indirectly, benefiting the tourism industry, there are tens of thousands of additional people who reap benefits from casinos.

Representative Conyers may have a point when he suggests that the topic deserves greater study. However, any such study should consider all of the factors including the impact on an industry which brings a lot to the community in which it ends up being located. Such a study should also examine how problem gambling could be addressed and what steps could be taken to assure that children are not gambling with a parent's credit card. There are also a host of economic considerations which will be implicated with respect to tax revenue for state and local communities that host such casinos.