The Canadian Press bucked the trend on positive poker reportage this week with an article that claims that, according to a recent survey more than half of Canadians think playing Internet poker for cash is unacceptable.
The poll, conducted by Decima Research found that in regard to the Internet poker questions 56 percent were against the idea, 25 percent had no problem with it, and the rest fell somewhere in the middle.
The Canadian press claims that the poll is one of the most detailed snapshots to emerge of gambling attitudes, and suggests great unease about online casinos. It also reveals a spike in public concern about addiction and lax regulation in regions where video lottery terminals are widespread.
There’s no shortage of foreign-based Internet commercial casino games. But such sites are illegal in Canada unless run by provincial governments. .
Turning to online gambling in general, the publication comments that gambling critics fear it’s just a matter of time before government-backed virtual casinos arrive and multiply. “My concern with Internet gambling is it gives you a cloak of anonymity,” says Montreal-based addiction counsellor Sol Boxenbaum. “You can get up in the middle of the night and go into the den while your spouse is asleep and gamble. And there’s really no protection against underage gambling.”
Decima survey director Richard Leigh-Bennett is quoted as saying, “You’re seeing that half the people think (online gambling) is a problem, but then you’ve got almost 80 per cent of the population participating in it. If you look at (rates of) smoking and drinking, it’s quite a bit lower. People are aware that there’s some sort of problem, but it’s something that is so ubiquitous across the country that people see it as relatively harmless entertainment.”
The controlled online survey of 3,538 adults was password protected to ensure participants only responded once. It is considered accurate within 1.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. 61 percent of those surveyed said they’d gambled at a casino, while 30 per cent said they’d done so in the past year. Fewer than 1 percent said they bet at a casino once a week or more