PPA Urges Players To Fight Anti-Online Poker Push

Anti-online gambling advocates may have been thwarted in their ambitions to have the industry banned in the US, but it certainly hasn’t been for lack of trying. This year has been no exception, and after the Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA) was defeated in May, by September US Senator Tom Cotton introduced bill S.3376 reaffirming the prohibition of internet gambling on a federal level.

While the anti-online gambling camp’s rhetoric may have died down recently during the general election presidential campaign, now that the dust is starting to settle, the nay sayers have gone on the offensive once more. At the beginning of December, ten Attorneys Generals from separate states subsequently banded together to send a letter to the President-elect Donald Trump urging him to reconsider the 2011 reinterpretation of the Wire Act.

While Trump will have more pressing issues to deal with while in office, including his three main policy issues of the economy, immigration and foreign policy, the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) is not resting on its laurels and has already organized a push back campaign against the AGs movement. Consequently, poker players in the country are now being urged to send a pre-prepared email to the relevant political figures in their local areas.

Completing the whole process will only take less than a minute, but has the potential to sway any senators sitting on the fence from lending their support to the current batch of RAWA supporters, and as part of the letter reads:

“Three states -NJ, DE, and NV- have regulated poker websites operating. They safeguard their citizens with stringent consumer protections while mandating proven systems to verify the identity, age and location of players. In fact, poker opponents cannot point to a single case of a player outside a participating state gaining access to these sites, or a single instance of underage play.”

While lame duck session provide golden opportunities for those politicians with agendas to advance their causes, the online poker community needs to be ever vigilante of potential dangers to the industry, and sending a PPA email is certainly a good step towards ensuring the current threat is blocked.