Popularity of online casino sites draws heat
10 Sep 2006
Online casino games are growing in popularity. The online casino game of poker alone now draws an estimated 23 million Americans to their keyboards every day. The growth in popularity has grown in a steady way over the period of the past 10 years, by 20 percent every year. The players currently wager $6 billion annually, according to studies. Parallel to the growth of the industry, there is a growing anti-gambling movement as well.
The anti-gambling camp argues that the game is bad for American family values. The movement's objective is to remove online casino gambling from the Internet. They have been mildly successful so far on the legislative arena. Washington has become the first state to ban online casino sites, including online poker. It is the only state to do so this far. At the core of their argument are the 2.9 million Americans ages 14 to 22 who play cards for money on a weekly basis (numbers according to an Annenberg Public Policy Center study last year).
But online casino players insist the industry is legal. They propose another solution to the legal problems that may rise from the online gambling business. Such an alternative solution comes from Michael Bolcerek, executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, a political group that boasts 100,000 members. Bolcerek and his group would prefer government regulation for sanctioned sites. Such taxing of online casino sites, the group says, could yield the federal government $3.1 billion in taxes if they indeed choose to do so.
