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Online Gamblers Need to Speak Up, Repeatedly
WASHINGTON, D.C. --
A lesson for gamblers, and especially online gamblers, lies in the development of smoking laws in the United States. Smokers constantly are in barrooms and poker venues, wondering how things got to the point that they couldn't smoke while gambling or drinking.
The answer is simple: smokers did not exercise their right to vote. Smokers are a significant portion, if not the majority, in the country, but because anti-smoking groups had well-organized lobbies and followers who would act as single-issue voters, while smokers ignored the ballots and lived their everyday lives, smoking became illegal in almost anyplace not your home (and that is coming soon).
If patrons of Internet casinos want their rights respected, they need to be willing to bombard their Congressmen with letters and phone calls, e-mails and any other communications possible to state their feelings. It is certain that the anti-gambling factions are making themselves heard, as Chad Hills today posted on the Focus on the Family site info telling his obedient listeners how to complain to Congress.
Steve Israel, a Democratic Representative from New York, had signed on as a co-sponsor of Barney Frank's bill proposing online casino regulation. He said recently, "When I'm at home, it always give me a thrill when someone approaches me and says, `I read about what you're doing on Internet poker.' That tells me how effective this cause has become.''
In other words, politicians will respond to the will of the people, if the people express themselves. It does no good to say that the Focus people are just a fringe element; if they are the only ones speaking, Congress will assume their opinion is the majority one. Only by each and every voter who loves his personal right to choose telling his Congressman he wants government to protect him by regulation, not take way his decision-making, will gambling avoid the fate of smoking.
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