Canada to Offer Legal Online Casino Gambling

The British Columbia Lottery Corporation will begin offering its residents a range of online games including blackjack, roulette and poker, via PlayNow.com, a secure and regulated online gaming site that will seek to take on the unregulated offshore gambling operators, according to IntergameOnline.com.  They are also raising weekly betting limits to $10,000.

Due for launch by March next year, PlayNow.com is in response to the increasing demand for online gaming from British Columbians.

But some argue it will simply fuel one's gambling addictions.

From The Province:

Studies, though, point to two sobering facts: in a poor economy, people in desperate straits are more likely to take financial risks; and, online gamblers are statistically far more likely than other gamblers to develop an addiction.

The government's own report, commissioned in 2003, supports these theories. Where the province estimates that 4.6 per cent of British Columbian gamblers are addicts, the "Problem Gambling Prevalence Study" estimated that 9.9 per cent of Internet gamblers have a moderate or severe problem. That one-in-10 figure was suggested long before Internet gambling became a mainstream phenomenon.

Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com