Thursday, March 01, 2007

Vices are as American as apple pie - tobacco, alcohol, gambling, pornography
and many others absolutely saturate today's society. Just as prevalent are
government policies to control them. Laws crafted to regulate the salacious
appetite of the public are among the most controversial public policies -
take the American alcohol prohibition failure as a prime example. Online
gamblers today find themselves in a predicament similar to our forefathers
who brewed moonshine in their basements. Placing wagers online is an
activity that causes no real harm to those around us, but the government has
decided that it must be stopped with little rhyme or reason to their
decision. But we don't need to go back 90 years to sympathize with a group
similarly denied the ability to freely pursue a mostly harmless activity. We
can instead look to a similar situation that has existed in this country for
decades: marijuana law reform. The prohibitions on marijuana and online
gambling are remarkably similar. Both are recreational activities that
consenting adults practice, for the most part, in the privacy of their own
homes. Both are essentially "victimless" crimes. Both are also generally
accepted (if grudgingly) by society at large. Just as medical marijuana use
consistently has 70% or higher approval ratings in polls, online gambling
also has generally had broad public tolerance. It is also widely held that
the real dangerous or criminal element of both marijuana and gambling is
caused primarily by the prohibition itself, not the activity. If legalized
and out in the open, we wouldn't have to worry as much about money
laundering to terrorists or underage access. There are plenty of solutions
to those problems, but prohibition only drives these things further
underground when we should be trying to get them out in the open. Bill Maher
remarked that marijuana is one of the only vices where we base public policy
on the worst segment of the population. Online gambling is another. Sure,
online gambling will have some addicts. But it already does, and those
addicts are certainly not going to call it quits just because it is a little
harder to get money out to the Caribbean. They will find a way to get it
there, and, if not, they will find another way to get that same gambling
fix, whether it be horseracing down the street, lottery at the corner bar,
or feeding a few 20's into an Indian casino the next county over.

If prohibition is designed to protect the small fraction of people who will
harm themselves, then there should be a lot more bans forthcoming. Alcohol
(almost 17,000 DUI deaths in 2005 alone) and tobacco (kills about 1200
people per day) should be first on the ban list, far ahead of marijuana and
gambling. Then of course we have to ban spray paint and gasoline (someone
might "huff" them), cold medications (might be used to make
methamphetamines), and, of course, the real killer, trans-fat. Fortunately,
New York City is well ahead of the rest of the country on solving that
problem.

The fact is, it is downright silly to assume that you can get rid of our
vices through prohibition. The "War on Drugs" is evidence of this. The
federal government has spent tens of billions of dollars per year for the
past three-and-a-half decades on the "War on Drugs". And for what? To arrest
over 5 million Americans in the past decade for marijuana possession? So
that over 12% of the current prisoner population is incarcerated on
marijuana crimes? Yet the prevalence of drug use has not significantly
changed over the past 35 years. The war is failing, folks. Notably, the same
thing happened during the Prohibition era, when alcohol use actually
increased. So even with all the evidence on the table that prohibition
doesn't work, we are going down the same path again with the new threat,
internet gambling.

Online gambling is NOT the "internet version of crack cocaine", as Senator
Jon Kyl has alleged. Online gambling is apparently not even the "crack
cocaine of gambling", a term usually reserved for electronic gaming machines
such as video slot machine and remote lottery terminals. Funny how we don't
see those dangers disappearing so quickly. In fact, video lottery terminals
are now legal in 6 U.S. States and almost all Canadian provinces. Slot
parlors and "racinos" are popping up at a frantic pace. And let's be
realistic for a minute - lotteries are not exactly charities giving away
money to try to help some lucky chosen few achieve the American dream. No,
they exist to raise money so that politicians can fund legislation to name
highways after themselves. Offshore sportsbook 5Dimes pays me 900-to-1 for
the same "Pick 3" that Pennsylvania pays me 500-to-1 on. And the offshore
one is the illegal of the two?

So what then can the history of the marijuana anti-prohibition movement tell
us about the future of internet gambling?

Well first of all, if change comes it will be painstakingly slow. NORML
(National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) has been advocating
for marijuana law reform for over 35 years, and they don't have a whole lot
to show for it. The progress that NORML has made has come mostly at the
state level, not the federal level. Currently 12 states allow the use of
medical marijuana, and new bills are constantly being introduced in other
states. However, the federal government is standing strong in its
classification of marijuana as a schedule I drug (high potential for abuse,
no valid medical use) even in the face of piles of evidence to the contrary.