A University of Illinois study found that for every dollar that states gain from gambling, they pay out three dollars in social and criminal costs. In just one year, that number more than quadrupled, going from about 60 in late 1997 to now more than 260 according to some estimates. And a recent HBO in-depth report by Jim Lampley noted that virtual sports books will collect more money from the Super Bowl than all the sports books in Las Vegas combined. This affects all of us. Not every problem that is national is also necessarily federal.
Internet gambling is a national problem AND a federal problem.
The Internet is, of course, interstate in nature. States cannot protect their citizens from Internet gambling if anyone can transmit it into their states. That is why the State Attorneys General asked for federal legislation to prohibit Internet gambling. The availability of gambling on the Internet, however, threatens to disrupt each state's careful balancing of its own public welfare and fiscal concerns, by making gambling available across state and national boundaries, with little or no regulatory control. I strongly support Senator Kyl's Internet Gambling Prohibition Act.