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Legal Online Gambling May Return to US
According to a story on News.com, legal online gambling may return to the US. The ban, put into place last year, is now in jeopardy thanks to the efforts of folks like Barney Frank, the Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services committee. Frank is of the opinion that adults should police themselves for excessive gambling, and the government should stay out of their way. "Friday's hearing included witnesses from companies that process online payments. In general, they echoed the arguments once used in favor of ending alcohol prohibition and that are now being invoked to decriminalize marijuana: It's better to legalize, tax and carefully regulate an industry than let it flourish with far less oversight in the black market. Some countries already do just that. In the United Kingdom, for instance, Internet gambling is legal and strictly regulated. Some of the larger online casino operators are publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange. "
It's kind of interesting to see the Bush Administration in favor of restricting commerce, while Barney Frank (a Democrat) wants to allow a freer (albeit still heavily regulated) market.
I am stupefied. Barney Frank has finally done something I agree with. The skiing must be pretty good in hell nowadays...
"GAMBLING IS A SIN" would only equal "NEEDS A MAN MADE LAW" in a Theocracy. I think a good portion of following the teachings of the Bible is that it should be something done out of free will, not a requirement of the state.
We are all just people.
You mean allowing a HUGE chunk of the population be addicted as opposed to a small manageable chunk?
Prior to Prohibition, there were a handful of saloons in New York city, and they were male only. Drinking was a social event, and virtually nobody drank alone. After prohibition was passed, there sprang up thousands of speakeasy saloons across New York, and they popularized drinking among women as well. The desire to leave no evidence lead to more solo drinking at home.
After prohibition ended, rates of drinking did NOT skyrocket, but rather began a long, slow slide. Even better, alcoholism became recognized as an actual illness that deserved treatment. In the prohibition era, suggesting such a thing marked you as a prohibitionist; it was impossible to talk about the subject rationally for as long as the insanity of the prohibitionists was in force.
And it doesn't matter if the dealer is selling their crack for $5 a pop, or $2.50 from the gov't
Try "free." The drug market regularly sees 100% markups, since the majority of drugs have a negligable cost of production. Sure you could charge $1.00 or $0.50 or something for clinical fees, but it makes no difference. Provided at cost, a heroin addict can afford his necessary levels of heroin on a McDonald's salary. (What's more, heroin has very little ill effects when clean and administered properly. People have lived for decades and been productive and valuable members of society while addicted to heroin in the past, but our current law turns them into parasites instead.)
You get rid of the relative few BIG criminals and make tons of small criminals.
Actually trial runs of this sort of thing in Britian showed a twelve-fold reduction in crime rates. So no.
It also showed a drop in current numbers of addicts, a reduction of new addicts, lower rates of prostitution and consequently lower transmission rates of stds and aids.
But I'm sure your idea would work really well.
You *NEVER* get rid of the blackmarket by legalizing something.
Tell that to all the prohibition-era gangsters who went legit after the law was repealed. The mafia dropped in size to less than half its previous numbers. The only thing that saved them was the illegalization of narcotics.
he cure for criminal behavior is making certain folks with these traits can never reproduce again (thats as far as I'll advocate, you can take what ever opinion you wish beyond that).
You really have NO FUCKING CLUE how many people you're talking about, do you? Here's a hint: We haven't got enough police to even hold that many people, much less line them up and push them into incinerators.
Asshole.