Academics Vote for Regulation

Academics believe that online casinos are creating a more unhealthy environment for gamblers than regulated land-based casinos. They feel it would be better for the government to legalize and regulate online gambling than to keep it underground, with no rules. Their concern is that, if not regulated, it will lead to more dangerous gambling addictions.

This theory is based in the fact that it is so much easier to gamble more often and to hide a serious addiction on an online casino than to have to travel to some far off place to gamble in public. June Cotte is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario and has been studying the online gambling phenomenon. She said, “One potential solution is to allow legitimate corporate sponsors, like the corporations that run the major casinos in Las Vegas or the government sponsors in Canada, to enter into a newly regulated market for online gambling. Just as legalized commercial gambling in casinos allows governments to regulate it, so, too, could the legalization of online gambling allow for better regulation and attempts to reduce the growth of problem gamblers.”

She believes that in a private setting gambling becomes much more serious, non-social and more aggressive. “The meaning of gambling changes, moving from a shared conviviality available in the casino to a no-holds-barred battle online. It brings out the gamblers' more competitive side,” she says. Cotte is taking steps to publish a book based on her study called, Blackjack in the Kitchen.