The War On Marijuana And The War Against Online Gambling

By Author: Mia Palermos
Total Articles: 76
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The government is currently spending around 1 billion dollars a year to keep 45,000 prisoners in state and federal prisons for Marijuana related charges. That is one billion dollars a year that can be better spent on welfare, education and medical insurance for the poor. All this money just to keep Marijuana illegal and this does not even cover the cost of keeping those jailed for other drug charges.

This is no different from the hundreds of millions of dollars the banking industry is going to have to spend to develop a system that can stop the transfer of money from one account into the account of online casinos for the purposes of casino gambling, which everyone involved in coming up with the rules and means to block these transfers admits there is no way to make it work.

In both cases the government would be smarter to legalize the usage of Marijuana and online casinos, regulate the industry to make safe and use the tax revenue to increase the living standards of our poorest citizens.

By keeping Marijuana illegal the government is not stopping anyone from getting it. All they do is make people have to ...
... travel to shady areas to purchase Marijuana. Making it unsafe for people to purchase, but if they legalized it, they would be reducing traffic to drug related areas and it would allow the police to better target dealers and users of harder drugs like crack, coke and heroin.

By keeping online casinos illegal they are missing out on all the tax revenue and causing those who prefer to gamble online to risk being ripped off with no possible recourse. One of the main reasons given for banning online gambling was the war on terrorism. There is a chance that terrorists could open an online casino and use the money to fund attacks of Americans, but banning it just makes it harder to see where the money is going. By legalizing and licensing the online casinos you would have a transparency into the industry that would allow the government to see that the money does not go to terrorists or to fund terrorism.

It would also allow some of the money that leaves the country every day to online casinos overseas to stay here to help create jobs and opportunities here that is currently going to someone else, by allowing American casinos to open casinos and Sportsbooks online. Bringing new industry to the USA would be an excellent way to give a desperately needed boost to a struggling economy.

Both the war on Marijuana and the war on online gambling cost the country a lot of money but have done little to stop drugs from entering the country and being sold or to stop people from gambling on a daily basis in online casinos and poker rooms.

These laws need to be thrown away and the countries attitudes towards them need to be looked and have a more accurate assessment on their impact on the country. In the end I believe we will find that online gambling and the legalization of marijuana will provide us with the tools we need to fix other more serious problems with the country.

Mia Palermos is a social activist who believes soft drugs and online casinos should be legal. She has never played poker online but believes it is her right to do so if she pleases.