Indiana Struggles with Gambling Laws
There is a new proposal in Indiana and it’s set to introduce more slot machine gaming to the state. Since 2007 the state has debated over gambling and using it to bring in money. Now, legislators are pushing for more slot machines to be placed in bars, restaurants and fraternal organization lodges. An old study by the Indiana Licensed Beverage Association showed that if slots and video poker are allowed, by putting 3,500 machines in the state there would be an increase of $300 million in tax-revenue dollars. That is a huge amount and would do a lot to quell the overwhelming budget problems the state is currently under.
Add to the mix the fact that there is a wide range of illegal operations when it comes to gambling going on. The US learned a difficult lesson with gambling and that is that Americans are going to do it—whether it is legal or not. Back in 2006 the UIGEA was introduced and the hope was to thwart online gambling. All the move did though was to push US residents to gamble at offshore casinos. In the end, it channeled billions of dollars out of the country. US legislators should remember that well. If states are going to ban slot machines, most likely people will just start using underground and illegal machines to wager with. It isn’t as simple as taking the offending problem away anymore. People have many outlets to get what they want and do what they want to do.
Indiana should remember well what happened back in 2009. The state created an Indiana Excise Police, which was a group tasked with eliminating the gambling industry. Their job was to keep things under wraps but the state’s new organization failed to make good their task. In the end, illegal gambling continued to grow in the market and created an even bigger problem for policing organizations. There are intricate underground groups that manage gambling and bring it to the public. It is more difficult to uncover these groups due to their covert dealings. It will take time for Indiana to figure out a decent law, but one thing the state cannot do is ban gambling. It didn’t work in 2006 and it didn’t work in 2009. That means that future efforts most likely won’t work either.
