Online gambling addiction can stimulate the brain in the same way alcohol and drugs and can go undetected for some times. This makes online gambling addiction a serious disorder. The UK government has announced a raft of gambling reforms, including a new statutory levy on big firms, in a bid to crack down on online addiction. Electronic gambling and virtual casino games are more addictive than having a crack cocaine, ecstasy pills or IV heroin addiction. One person’s addiction is another’s profit.  Gambling is very big business, much of it run by companies with stock market listings who are dedicated to maximizing profits for their shareholders. It is easy to gamble and all you need is a mobile phone and children, teens can be drawn into it through video gaming features such as loot boxes and requires no illegal activity unless a person is underage. The financial loss can be swift and devastating as there are more suicides from gambling than any other addiction. Gambling is a transaction – a wager between a punter and the house which sets the odds on the likelihood of the chances of winning. Gambling has been around for thousand years, including horse race, lottery or a football match and casinos. It has been around before the minted currency, instead of cash, people use to use their belongings such as livestock food etc.

Gambling in fact have actually started in Ancient China, according to “Book of Songs”, which showcases that the tiles may have been part of the lottery game. Chinese were employing various things as funds to finance  numerous government project back in 200 B.C, known as Keno Slips. The very first game of cards appeared in China in the 19^th century.

King Louis IX prohibited gambling altogether.

In 1847 gambling in Macau has been legal when the Portuguese government legalized the activity  and taxed it revenues in the autonomous colony. Chinese immigrant labourers gamble as a pastime, with makeshift stalls for fan-tan occupying the city streets. Since then, Macau has become known worldwide as the “Gambling capital of the world” or Monte Carlo of the East”. Lights are still on along the popular Cotai Strip, feeding Macau’s many hotels and casinos.  Macau’s gaming landscape boomed after Portugal retroceded it to Chinese rule in 1999, the city freed up its gaming sector, opening the market to multinational companies such as MGM, Wynn and Las Vega Sands. The city occupying a tenth of Las Vegas land area at 32km² with only 680, 000 residents, but Macau generated revenues six times that of America’s gambling capital before the pandemic. In 2019. It brought in $36 billion. Today the industry’s monthly revenues are down to $300 million compared to Vegas’ $659 million.

In 1905, Las Vegas was established, and back then it was a small town that represented a stopover for trains that were travelling from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. In 1931, everything  changed as Gambling was finally legalized in Las Vegas which has positively affected its economy and this city has started blooming in many ways.

Twenty-nine years ago, Antigua and Barbuda welcomed the Free Trade & processing Act, which meant that licenses were granted to very organization that wanted to open an online casino.

Two years later the Kahnawake Gaming Commission was established with the goal to regulate online gaming activity form the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake and issue gaming licenses to various online casinos and poker rooms all around the world.

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