Help Stop Internet Gambling Bill!
This year there are several gambling bills the General Assembly is considering, but internet gambling may be the most dangerous, anti-family one of them all!
The Virginia Senate will consider SB 118, introduced by Senator Mamie Locke (D-23, Hampton), a bill that would legalize internet gaming in the commonwealth, Monday! A very tight vote is with members of both parties crossing over to vote for and against.
Internet gambling far exceeds the already hazardous forms of gaming approved by the General Assembly earlier this decade, including casinos, neighborhood slot machines and sports betting. (The House version of the bill is still in committee as of this e-mail.)
Virginia has gone from ZERO to 60 in a matter of figurative seconds in legalizing gambling and it is time to hit the brakes because internet gaming puts a 24-hour casino in the palm of people’s hands. Constant notifications and online ads rope in unsuspecting adults and minors alike and the resulting addictions lead not only to financial, but family destruction. This was starkly illustrated in House testimony earlier this session by a former Michigan multi-millionaire business woman who lost everything because of online gaming and a former Massachusetts lawmaker, who went bankrupt.
But it’s even worse than that. In early January, a 17 year-old Ohio girl met up with a 39 year-old man whom she “met” on a gaming site – not a social media site, not a teenage hangout site, not on social media. She went missing and was found dead just last week. The man, though not yet charged in her death, led authorities to her remains. Yet the gaming industry cannot explain how it intends to block minors from working around whatever guardrails it says it can build. By the way, if software programs are as protective as they say, why do they need to be updated so frequently?
Whether it’s child predators, higher suicide rates by gambling addicts, financial and family destruction or minors losing their parents’ savings, nothing good can come from internet gaming.
ACTION: Help stop these tragedies in the making! Let your senator know you do not want this most dangerous of all forms of gambling in Virginia!
