Online Gambling in Latest Campus Craze
16 Feb 2006
A typical scene in a campus dorm room: Paul is lying on his bed which is covered by books and empty packets of crisps and fast food and he is busy with his laptop playing online poker. Paul is busy gambling on two games of online poker simultaneously. Paul is one of the millions of students in the United States at the moment which have become enthralled by the lure of online casino gambling. Gambling on online casinos is becoming a national student pastime.
Gambling at online poker is definitely the most popular game amongst students. There are an estimated $1.6 million students, mostly male, who are regular gambling players. Twenty six percent of college males gamble in online card games at least once a month and four percent make gambling a pastime of at least once a week. These figures have risen by 1% since last year.
The rise in gambling figures is cause for both educators and parents. The problem was highlighted recently when Greg Hogan, a college student, robbed a bank to pay for a gambling debt which he an incurred over a few months of online poker playing. The Justice Department considers online gambling illegal at any age but online poker rooms are based off-shore, in Canada and Gibraltar and the law is hard to implement. Both educators and parents are aware of the problem but there is little that they can do to enforce the law and not invade the students’ privacy.
