Online Gambling Legality
If you couldn’t already tell, I’m in favor of online gambling.
Sure, I understand that there are concerns. There are plenty of people who probably shouldn’t be gambling at all (at an online casino USA or land-based casino, or even making bets with friends), including clinically-diagnosed addictive personalities and children, but I firmly believe that the rest of us have a right to make the decision for ourselves.
This makes my situation a little unusual, because I am a US citizen, and the US has some strange laws. In fact, I suspect that nobody really understands them all. For one thing, a lot of people think that online gambling is just illegal. That’s crazy! I don’t know where they got that idea…
…well, I kinda do know where they got that idea. Some people want all gambling to be illegal, and they know how to twist the facts and convince people that it already is. I suppose these same people would pretend that alcohol was illegal if they thought that people wouldn’t know any better.
Plus, the laws that do exist don’t really help the matter. The only Federal law that talks about online gambling is called the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), and when you see someone refer to it (even professional journalists, who really should know better), nine times out of ten they’ll think that it makes online gambling illegal.
It doesn’t even say anything about online gambling’s legal status. All it says is that banks and other financial institutions are prohibited from doing business with ‘unlawful’ online gambling companies. It doesn’t say which of the companies are legal and which aren’t, or even what specific details would make one legal and another illegal. There’s certainly nothing that says (for example) that poker is legal and online slots aren’t, or that sports betting is illegal but bingo isn’t, and so on…
Some states do have more specific rules, and I highly recommend checking out the details of whatever state you happen to be in (a thorough and fairly current reference is over at www.gambling-law-us.com, but keep in mind that these things can change with very little notice!).