Essay, Research Paper: Legalizing Casinos

People have made lots of mistakes throughout the history. Most of them were sooner or later solved out; however, some still remain problematic issues that need to be revised and solved. One of the most frightening issues of the twentieth century is gambling. U.S. News & World Report provide the following statistics on gambling: 1.5 to 3% of the population in a state with two or more forms of legalized gambling will become compulsive gamblers, between 5 and 11% of the teenagers will become compulsive gamblers, 25% surveyed attempted suicide, 60% planned how they would commit suicide, 99% compulsive gamblers commit crimes, 25% end up in the legal system. This includes bad checks, forgery, fraud, embezzlement from job, theft, bank robbery, selling drugs, street crime, prostitution, etc. 100% of compulsive gamblers becomes physically abusive, especially towards children. These numbers show how dangerous gambling is. The law should forbid casinos, because they perform no necessary service and negatively influence many people’s lives, safety of the society , and is a threat to democracy.
“Gambling itself is probably the biggest producer of money for the American la Cosa Nostra (that) there is”. One of the strongest reasons for prohibiting casinos stands crime. Gambling increases the number of murders and suicides based on financial issues; it also attracts racketeers and mobsters. Therefore, an assumption can be made that government partly encourages crime by legitimating official casino houses instead of preventing citizens from the “tyrant”. Casino related crimes touch not only gamblers and owners of the businesses but also the rest of the society. For instance, increased number of robberies and corrupted officials directly affect democracy and safety of the society. Casino business is also related to prostitution, as long as young women are sometimes forced to become prostitutes if they cannot pay their debts to casino house owners.
Besides crime, gambling diminishes person’s moral values, distracts people from family life and puts some of them in to deep financial problems. If a person gets high revenue from gambling, which occurs extremely rare, he or she has a larger claim for welfare as well as shaping wrong attitudes toward work. Consequently, when a person wins and spends big amount of money, he/she will attempt to repeat the luck. It, in most of the cases, ends with big debts that lead to crisis in family, commitment of crimes and even suicide.
Furthermore, all those problems may appear unnoticeably, because gambling hooks its victims just like drugs. It exploits the weaknesses of personality. Once a person felt the pleasure of receiving easy money he/she simply cannot stop to continue the habit. Compulsive gamblers lose friends and relatives because they betray them only for the sake of winning some money. As long as they start to face legal and financial problems, regressed physical and mental state, complicated communication in their families and society, gambling can be defined as a dangerous illness. It is probably a bigger problem than alcoholism or drug abuse. In other words, gamblers are addicted to the destructive habit. How can humanity tolerate such a disaster?
Opposition might say that there would be more underground casino houses if the legal ones suddenly become forbidden. That would definitely be a reasonably true statement, but not a moral solution. If government approves gambling, then why not legalize destructive drugs, prostitution and robbery. All of those can be found in the underground, but none of them fit our society’s moral standards.
Another possible argument for legal gambling would state the shady fact that government collects high taxes from casinos. It is true; however, gambling contributes to corruption in government and courts. Gamblers do not feel any moral obstacles in attempt to corrupt police, judges and legislators by bribing them and involving the officials into the underground community. On the other hand, government has no tools to determine the correct amount of taxes to be collected, therefore the owners of the casinos will probably do everything they can to hide a large portion of money that depends to the country. It means that by legalizing the casinos, government consciously legalizes hiding of taxes; and taxes are basically the prime reason for legalizing this business.
Harvey N. Chinn in his article Task Force on Gambling Addiction in Maryland shares his opinion about gambling: “…gambling is socially disintegrating, politically corrupt and morally dangerous. Gambling is bad business, bad politics, and bad morals!” To sum up, casinos do only harm to the society, and reasons for keeping them as a part of legal businesses remain very weak; therefore the government of any country has to make a wise decision about protecting their citizens from invasion of the casino world. It is wrong to legalize crime.


Word Count: 784