US States Continue to Debate Slots Legalization
There are a lot of ways to get around the law. People know it. Thieves know it. This is one of the problems that legislators are having when it comes to making the rules. They are coming up left and right with issues due to lacking bills. The most egregious one of which was the 2006 UIGEA. The law was supposed to stop online gambling. In the end, it did little to help. In fact it created more misunderstandings than anything else. For example, one of the biggest challenges it created was by never defining what “gambling” exactly was. This left the door open for interpretation. Right now the US is in a state of every-state-for-themselves when it comes to gambling. some are allowing slots in due to the huge tax revenue dollars and others are not. They believe that slots will bring in crime and cause more addictions than they are worth. Laws are not in order to manage gambling or slots play and that is causing a huge amount of confusion to the market.
So states are left to do their own decision making when it comes to slot machines and how they are going to operate. Some states are pushing for some slots activity. They know that slots make up about 60% of the Las Vegas revenue. It is no secret that the games are big business and that makes they highly coveted in the market. Some states are putting them in casinos and race tracks. Others are pushing to have them in bars and pubs. Of course the states take a good portion of the revenues that come from them, as do the counties and the cities they are located in. But the money-making potential is what is the huge draw for legislators. Still, not all legislators are on board. Some are still hesitant and they believe that slots are the most addictive games in the gambling market. They believe that if they allow them in, they are going to create more addicts than their jurisdictions are ready to handle. Not to mention the further problems like job loss, family dissolution, foreclosure, repossession, etc. Only time will tell which ones wins out, but right now legislators are doing a hefty job of fighting it out.
