Rhode Island's Race To The Bottom

Can Online Gambling Save RI?
Dan McGowan, GoLocalProv News Editor

With $350 million in annual gambling revenue potentially at risk as Massachusetts moves forward with plans to build three resort-style casinos and a slot parlor, Rhode Island will look into internet gambling as a way to generate extra cash, the state’s Lottery Director Gerald Aubin said this week.

The issue was raised after the Department of Justice (the DOJ) ruled that online gambling does not violate existing federal law, opening the door for cash-strapped states to expand gambling revenues through internet lotteries and potentially, online poker.

The decision came after New York and Illinois sought a legal opinion over whether each state could begin selling lottery tickets online. Because it would not involve sports betting, the DOJ said the states’ proposals would not violate the Federal Wire Act.

Biggest Policy Failure

But critics say the DOJ’s ruling will do far more harm than good for states, arguing that it will be far easier for addicts and young people to gamble if they can do it online. And while the DOJ’s ruling was meant to address lotteries, it also opens the door for online poker, which made international headlines earlier this year when the two largest websites in the world (PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker) were closed to American players.

In a blog post written this week, Les Bernal, the executive director of Stop Predatory Gambling, blasted the ruling.

“It essentially allows state governments to open a lottery retailer in every home, office, dorm room and handheld phone with an internet connection, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” he wrote.

Bernal continued: “It is time the DOJ and other government agencies whose purpose is to promote more fairness and equality in American society take aim at one of the country’s biggest policy failures in the last forty years- government’s predatory gambling program.”

For additional information about the flawed DOJ opinion: Who will fight for America’s Lottery Class if not the Department of Justice?