RELIGIOUS RIGHT WRITES TO CONGRESS

19 June 2009

Christian groups protest Barney Frank's attempt to legalise online gambling....but is their statistical information correct?
 

Predictably, the religious right is mobilising to oppose Congressman Barney Frank's proposed legislation aimed at regulating and licensing online gambling in the United States.

According to the publication Christianity Today several Christian groups signed a letter this week urging politicians in the House of Representatives to oppose Frank's HR 2267 Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act.

But a sweeping general comment that is not supported by scientific research and fact is made when the letter claims: "The prevalence of gambling addiction is three to four times higher with Internet gambling versus non-internet gambling. ... online gambling represents a highly invasive and reckless form of taxation dependent on human exploitation."

It's a common, and never substantiated, claim made by opponents of online gambling.

Signers of the letter included Focus on the Family's Dr. Richard Land; president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Gary Bauer; president of American Values, Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family and Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council.

The letter also urges the House to oppose HR 2267, a bill that would put the controversial regulations supporting the UIGEA on hold until December 2010.

The claims made in the letter to Congress are at best economical with the truth or uninformed when viewed against recent scientific studies carried out by respected and impartial professionals like Dr. Howard Shaffer and his research team at the Center for Addictions Studies at Harvard Medical School.

For example, the statement that gambling on the Internet is three to four times more likely to result in gambling addiction than conventional gambling is contradicted by the Harvard findings, along with other professional studies in the UK.

Reporting on his detailed study of gambling addiction carried out over several years and with access to massive data bases, Dr. Shaffer Shaffer noted that at the commencement of the study investigators anticipated that online gaming would have a much higher level of addiction than its land-based equivalent, but that assumption was proven totally false. In fact, Shaffer concluded, Internet gambling had a very low level of addiction compared with land gambling, and was far safer.  

Online Casino News Courtesy of Infopowa

Top of page | Home | News | Forum | Webcast | Vortran | Accredited Casinos | Evil Ones | Pitch a Bitch | Online Gambling Resources | Poker