Should Casinos Be Legalized?

Should or Should Casinos Not Be Legalized in Thailand?

Does Las Vegas sound exciting? Have you ever longed to go there and try your hand at a fortune? Almost everyone has a dream that they’ll win big, and this is why towns such as Las Vegas have such a strong appeal to the public. The problem arises when people visit casinos and take gambling too far. For some this form of entertainment turns into an addiction. This creates a rather big controversy whether casinos should or should not be legalized in certain countries such as Thailand. Some claim that it should be legalized because casinos are beneficial to the economy in that they create new jobs and are advantageous to local businesses, while others oppose it because it does not help the economy and brings along social problems. After giving this topic much thought I came to the conclusion that casinos should stay illegal because though on the surface statements of the pros seem beneficial, there lies an underneath group of lies which support the gambling industry, specifically casinos.

Pros for legalizing casinos believe that gambling expansion can create more job opportunities and as a result reduce the unemployment rate. But let’s look at reality; even though casinos create new jobs; those jobs created may not be new jobs for the local economy. For example, if there was a newly-opened casino in the Nakonpathom Province, how many people operating a job within the Casino do you think would really be from Nakonpathom? I mean not everyone is a born card dealer right? A card dealer in Nakonpathom doesn’t necessarily have to be from that area. He or she may be, and probably is, from a different province. This means that the locally unemployed workers will not benefit from the new jobs that will open as a result of opening the casino. In addition, the jobs that casinos do provide are low paying jobs, workers generally do not move up the corporate ladder. For instance, a worker at Foxwoods Casino in Hartford which is one of the largest casinos in the world stated that he and his co-workers can not even afford a vehicle on the wages they earn (PACT, n.d.). Moreover, the jobs used for casinos have taken away other jobs from other areas of the economy. In fact, a casino expert and professor at the University of Illinois John Kindt stated, “the field research indicate that nationwide you stand to lose 1.5 jobs for every job the casino createsвЂ¦Ð²Ð‚Ñœ (“Gambling causesвЂ¦Ð²Ð‚Ñœ, n.d.). A reason for this is that the casino jobs went to people who moved in from other provinces, not to the people the casino was built to help. If casinos were altogether genuine about helping the local unemployed workers, they should offer the new jobs to local workers first rather than filling up the jobs with outsiders from other cities and states. Furthermore, the government may consider regulating this idea on all new casinos opening in the future. This will guarantee that casinos aid locally unemployed workers. As optimistic as the aforementioned idea sounds, the jobs that are opening inside the casinos could not accommodate for all those lost as a result of the casino opening.

Supporters of casinos also say casinos encourage the tourism industry and big spenders will come spend money on local businesses and therefore boost the economy. So, is this true? Nope! In fact, many local economies are actually hurt by the existence of a casino.

By providing everything a person needs, the casinos are designed to keep people inside, making people spend less money outside of casinos, which doesn’t help the vast majority of local businesses. As Donald Trump, the richest man in the world, said, “People will spend a tremendous amount of money in casinos, money that they would normally spend on buying a refrigerator or a new car. Local businesses will suffer because they’ll lose customer dollars to the casinos” (“Casino Effects”, n.d.) I agree with the pros saying that casinos may attract tourists but think about it. Instead of spending their expandable money in local stores in clothing or appliances, tourists gamble it away. In addition, the majority of the people who go to casinos are the people from the surrounding area, which does not help either.

On a closer aspect, one of the single hardest hit businesses by the gambling industry is perhaps the restaurants around the casinos. Casinos offer an enormous amount of cheap food to attempt to keep people inside. Many of them even have promotions, where free food is offered to cover the slower times of the day, for instance the Palace Casino on the Mississippi Gulf Coast offers a free Buffet every day. (“Free Stuff..”, 2001) What now? The losers are the neighborhood restaurants many of whom soon go out of business. In Atlantic City, for example, the number of restaurants has decreased by 40 percent since 1997. (Dunstan, 1997) What do you think would happen to street vendors in Thailand? Exactly! They would probably go down the drain. (Which may be beneficial for the society but for the purpose of this argument, the bottom line is they suffer) You see, casinos are nothing but a nightmare to the small locally owned businesses.

Furthermore, pros say that there is nothing inherent in gambling and that any activity that attracts large numbers of people may cause an increase in crime rates. It doesn't have anything to do with gambling, inherently. Well