| GamblingPhD menu | We Must Protect Our Children for Real
December 13, 2008 The idea that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, or UIGEA, was passed to protect our children is absurd as evidenced by the latest case out of New York of a girl who fell prey to a predator while online. The government has made the case that online gambling should remain illegal because we have to protect our children from underage gambling and the predators that can come with that.
However, if family groups and our government are truly interested in protecting our children they will legalize and regulate online gambling. In September a 14 year old girl was playing at an online gambling site where she met Andrew Petitt � who turned out to be a 28 year old male from Pennsylvania. She went to be with him who then kidnapped her to the mountains in Western Maryland. When she was finally found, she was returned to her parents � but not after having been raped by Pettit who is currently in jail awaiting trial.
This is just one case, but there are millions of them out there. If we want to keep our children from participating in online gambling we have to make our laws stricter and regulate the industry that currently allows them to. By regulating the online gambling industry, you regulate the online casinos. If they have someone to answer to they will be much more diligent about keeping out our youth as they know that they will be prosecuted if they don�t.
But if there is no one to police them, why would they care? Why would they worry about some underage girl online gambling? They might not want it to happen, but it will because they won�t be as diligent as they would have been had they been threatened with prosecution or banning for doing so. |
