UIGEA: Newspaper urges tougher ban

According to a piece in this week's issue of the Christian Science Monitor, the United States should toughen its stance on online gambling by banning Internet betting on horseracing.

Founded in 1908, the mainstream daily newspaper is published by The First Church of Christ, Scientist of Boston with a public-service mission but features both secular national and international reports.

The newspaper stated that the percentage of American university students gambling online fell to 1.5 percent last year from 5.8 percent the previous year thanks to the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). It wrote that members of Congress who want to repeal UIGEA are rolling back progress by wishing to tax 'this type of addictive betting'.

"Not included in the cost of this revenue stream, of course, would be the social price paid from the suffering and financial ruin that online gaming inflicts on a minority of players who become addicted to gambling," read the piece.

"And the privacy of Internet gambling provides a particular problem for this vulnerable group. Complicating the issue are concerns expressed by the European Union (EU) that the US is not playing fairly according to World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. The EU, which favours Internet gambling, points out that the current American law doesn't ban Internet gambling on horseracing in the United States. And the US law discriminates against European-based online gaming companies, EU officials say. The EU plans to investigate the law over the coming months with the possibility of filing a complaint to the WTO."

"Betting establishments in EU countries would love to return legally to the US market and see the inconsistency in the US law as a handy wedge to force the US to back down. But Congress should go the other way and strengthen the law by banning Internet gambling on horse racing as well," the piece conlcuded.