Reply #14: Poker playing is driving a gambling craze among today's tweens and teens

[oberliner]

In a 2005 Media Awareness Network (MNet) survey of students' Internet habits, 23 per cent of male students in Grades 10 and 11 report having visited a gambling site in the past school year. Most gambling sites only require a major credit card, which many university and even high school students possess.

That is according to this site: http://www.bewebaware.ca/english/gambling.aspx

I really didn't mean to make this big a deal out of the issue. To be honest, I don't really care about this bill one way or the other. I just think calling it a threat to American freedom is overstating things a little bit. If you are an adult and you want to bet on a game or play poker, you are free to do so. It may not be as easy to do as you would like it to be, but in my view, this bill doesn't really prevent any currently legal activity from taking place. If one wants to make sports betting legal in states other than Nevada then one should petition their state legislators to change the law.

That said, I can see how this bill essentially was promoted by Republicans to protect their non-online casino donors.

I'm not sure how the casino industry feels about online gambling. Does it cut into their business or does it encourage more people to visit non-online casinos?

I do think that children getting addicted to gambling is a serious problem that I don't have a solution for.