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The only thing stopping minors, typically, is a lack of access to a credit card. Professor Jeffrey Derevensky at the International Centre for Youth Gambling Problems and High Risk Behaviors at McGill University say they don't forever need a card to get hooked. "What we're worried about although are the kids who are gambling on the internet sites for fun. If you go on these sites, they frequently have a practice side, or a free trial side, where you're not actually gambling for money. It is easy for kids to log on, still if they can't play for money. In one study, nine per cent of the kids surveyed said they had left on the internet casino sites to play for fun."
Deverensky says playing for fun may get the kids enthusiastic on gambling. He says there is no way to know what strategies are used on the 'fun' sites that could give confidence people to gamble for real.
In 1997 federal MP David Mills submitted a private member's bill to create online gambling legal and keeping pace by the federal government. His quarrel was that the underground gaming economy should be keeping pace, in the same way that provincial lotteries are. Bringing it mid-air would mean government could take a cut. Some of that money could be redirected to programs to help problem gamblers.
His bill went nowhere. He says without the hold up of Prime Minister Jean Chretien, the bill was fated.
The pros and cons
Ironically, group and detractors of legal online casinos often use the same
argument: protection of consumers.
Keith Furlong of the Interactive Gaming Council argues that legalizing online gambling would let for regulation. "[Legal online casinos] would give a better option and a safer route for consumers," he says.
But Jamie Wiebe of the accountable Gambling Council of Ontario worries that online casinos aren't the similar as land-based ones. "It seems internet gambling is a different sort of action, in that it's and remote activity," says Wiebe. That may lead to, or contribute to, gambling addictions.
Furlong argues that with keeping pace gambling, money can be put in the direction of programs for problem gamblers. That's what happens with the money the provinces make now.
But gambling detractor Sol Boxenbaum says that money is being collected off the backs of the victims. "They're creating the problem, and then they're charitable two per cent of the income to fight the problem that wouldn't be there, if they hadn't shaped it in the first place."
Boxenbaum says its time to sit back and get a look at the changes in the gambling
industry in Canada, chiefly since the introduction of casinos. "Right now,
it's just a free-for-all," he says, "We have to stop structure and
start analyzing what's happened."