Originally Posted on Friday Oct 23 0:00:00 BST 2009
Some people may say the that the fact that gamblers in Tauranga and Western Bay, New Zealand are gambling less has got to be a good thing – it seems that the gamblers have reduced their pokie spend by 5% in 2009 – however it does seem that there is a negative impact to these changes in gambling habits.
The community schemes and projects that get grant money from the proceeds of pokie gambling are starting to get less because of the reduced spending and this is at a time when spending on any type of community funding is shrinking anyway.
New Zealand’s gambling habits, it seems, does have great benefit to the community and this is something that we would not want to reduce too much.
If online gambling were to be properly regulated perhaps some revenue earned from online casinos could be channeled into these worth projects…
