FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#268 – Adventures in the Law, Part V – Does Online Poker Relate to “Problem Gambling”?

Posted by Editor | Filed under Uncategorized

There are some people who just hate gambling. Those people are a tiny minority but a powerful one. If you take a few people who think something is biblically sinful or they personally suffered because of it or they see an opportunity to benefit politically from publicizing an otherwise unimportant issue, watch out! That’s how political careers are made and ruined, how presidential elections turn, how political power ebbs and flows. If you want to curry favor with religious fundamentalists, especially if you’re not dead-set against a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion, you can make a fast set of powerful friends by coming out against the evils of online gambling.

Unless you truly think you’re doing God’s work, however, you need to feel you’re on the correct side of the issue. You have to believe the arguments that online poker’s easy availability caters to problem gamblers and/or creates them. We’ve heard the rhetoric (“click your mouse, lose your house”), though probably few people reading this blog believe it. But SOMEBODY believes it, and based on the state of the law, a lot of people assume it to be true.

Does online poker relate to problem gambling? A recent study in Great Britain provided an unambiguous answer to that question.

The Gambling Commission, the government agency responsible for regulating gambling in Great Britain, released the “British Gambling Prevalence Survey 2007″ in September. The survey was commissioned “as part of the Gambling Commission’s commitment to the licensing objectives of keeping crime out of gambling, ensuring gambling is conducted fairly and openly, and protecting children and vulnerable people from harm from gambling.”

The survey was conducted independent of the Commission, and it should be noted that the government’s stance on gambling is much less hospitable to gambling in Great Britain than in the U.S. You might be able to fit all London’s casinos inside the MGM Grand and just about all its casino signs inside one of its guest rooms. The key findings included the following:

* 68% of the population participated in some form of gambling during the past year;

*Excluding the National Lottery Draw, 48% participated in some form of gambling; and

*Using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM IV) and the Canadian Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI), 0.5%-0.6% of the adult population qualified as problem gamblers.

The most important aspect of these findings, however, was that THEY WERE IDENTICAL TO THE RESULTS OF AN IDENTICAL PRE-INTERNET-POKER-ERA SURVEY IN 1999. The same survey in 1999 found that approximately the same percentage of adults in 1999 participated in some form of gambling (72%) and some form other than the national lottery (46%). Most important, the 0.6% problem gamblers identified based on DSM IV criteria in 2007 “is the same percentage of the population the same screen identified in 1999.” (Emphasis added.)

This is empirical evidence on a wide scale, based on an independent survey, for a country with a less favorable gambling climate than the U.S. and it directly DISPROVES the assumption central to the opposition to online poker. If online poker caused problem gambling or enabled problem gamblers, the number of problem gamblers would have been much higher in 2007 than 1999. There was practically no internet poker then and now it’s available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection.

So where are all the problem gamblers as a result of eight years of UNREGULATED online poker? Keep in mind that if the numbers showed an increase but not a huge inrease in problem gambling, supporters of online poker could credibly argue that legalizing and regulating it could control the problem gambling element. But it’s supposedly been “anything goes” for eight years. Any English kid capable of stealing a parent’s credit card can get online. A convicted embezzler can get online. A drop-out from Gamblers Anonymous can get online. Someone banned from all London casinos can get online.

Despite the refusal of governments to clarify online poker’s legal status and regulate it, it has been out there, unrestrained, causing evil.

Except there hasn’t been any evil. Online poker hasn’t led more people in Great Britain to gamble or to become problem gamblers.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Be Sociable, Share!