Addiction Does Not Require Prohibition

by Allyn Jaffrey Shulman

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America's favorite 21st Century hobby, web surfing, has been identified as the one of the most highly addictive activities of the modern workplace. According to research conducted by Websense Inc., 25% of employees feel addicted to the Internet. Numerous other studies lend weight to the addiction argument.

A recent study by the American Psychological Association and abcnews.com found that Internet addiction is actually gaining acceptance as a psychological disorder.

Last year, the American Psychiatric Association issued an advisory opinion stating that in EVERY study of Internet gambling, high school and college-aged people show the highest rates of problems. Dr. Sheila Blume, chair of the APA committee that issued the advisory on Internet gambling, said young people are particularly susceptible because they use the Internet more than any other age group. "This is a new kind of availability of gambling, which has no age restriction, no time restriction and no fairness restriction in many cases," Blume said. According to the APA, 10% to 15% of young people surveyed reported having significant gambling problems. The APA notes that 1% to 6% of young people can be classified as pathological gamblers.

A study by Harvard Medical School found that the number of pathological gamblers in the United States and Canada has risen from 2.2 million to 3.8 million over the last 20 years. A good portion of that is due to the Internet.

Addiction to online gambling IS a serious problem that responsible lawmakers should address. Please remember that the one and only case holding that the 1961 Federal Interstate Wire Act does not apply to online gambling arose when two addicted gamblers lost their shirts and sued so they wouldn't have to pay back their credit card companies!

However, the fact that people become addicted to certain products does not mean the product itself should be banned. For example, some people become addicted to the consumption of alcohol. History has taught us that the prohibition of alcohol was neither wise nor effective. National prohibition of alcohol (1920-33) was undertaken to reduce crime, corruption and addiction problems and to improve the health and welfare in America-all noble goals that failed miserably because economic models teach us that prohibition of mutually beneficial exchanges is doomed to failure.

As it turned out, more people became addicted: Alcohol was more dangerous to the consumer because it was not regulated, bootleggers were to be found in every city, corruption of public officials was rampant, Prohibition removed a significant source of tax revenue, AND it led many drinkers to switch to opium, marijuana, patent medicines, cocaine, and other dangerous substances that they would have been unlikely to encounter absent Prohibition. All in all, Prohibition was a total failure.

Similarly, efforts to ban Internet gambling will also fail miserably. People will not stop gambling. And they will not stop gambling on-line, just as the drinkers would not abstain merely because of Prohibition. So what's the answer? In this writer's opinion, the answer is clearly REGULATION. This is the same answer embraced by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a democrat from Michigan, who introduced a bill that would create a five-member commission to study the feasibility of making Internet gambling legal in the United States.

Those who support banning Internet gambling make the point that our children can become addicted to on-line gambling because it is so easily accessible. It is a point made by La Falce, Leach and other lawmakers who are lobbying to ban Internet gambling.

In my 20 years of experience as a criminal defense attorney, one of the things I have learned in the courtroom is about concessions. If my opponent makes a correct point, it does not weaken my argument to admit that the point made is correct because that does not mean that my opponent's CONCLUSION is similarly correct.

Just because some children DO become addicted to Internet gambling is not a persuasive argument for banning it. Why? Because gambling and the problems attendant thereto will exist regardless of any ban, because REGULATING online gambling works more effectively (just like laws REGULATING alcohol work more effectively than prohibiting it), and because REGULATION and TAXATION are more productive ways to enhance society by both, protecting citizens and producing revenue.

If you know someone suffering from an Internet addiction, invite them to see http://www.netaddiction.com/ ; for a Gambling addiction see http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/diamonds

Allyn Jaffrey received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Irvine in 1977, where she graduated cum laude and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa for scholastic achievement. She is a practicing criminal defense attorney, having received a Juris Doctorate with scholastic merit from Western State University where she served as Research Editor and Executive Editor of Law Review in 1982-1983. She has lectured all over California, teaching other attorneys the fine points of criminal defense. She specializes in legal research and her areas of expertise include the filing of extraordinary writs, appeals and motions where a lower court judge commits legal error or where the police or prosecutors engage in misconduct. Allyn has been closely following the development of gaming law and the Internet ever since Jay Cohen was convicted in New York of operating a sports betting business from Antigua in violation of the Wire Act.

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