Hawaii and Online Gambling

You do not associate Hawaii with Online Gambling, in fact you do not associate Hawaii with any form of gambling as it is one of the only two states that has no legalized gambling at all, the other being Utah. There have, over the past 30 years or so, been around 150 attempts to change this ruling however every one of them has been unsuccessful. So after failing yet again last year State Senators Donovan M. Dela Cruz, Gilbert Kahele, and Malama Solomon have introduced a new bill that would at last legalize gambling, including online poker. The new bill is almost identical to the one admitted last year with added protection for consumers and more security measures thrown in. The usual selling points are being presented with the capture of revenue that is currently going off-shore being one of them. A little more time has been taken to actually set out where the additional revenue created will go in Hawaii and 35% would go to public school improvements, 25% to the university, 5% to problem gambling, 5% to administration, 10% watershed protection and the rest being divided up and going towards medical family practices and medical study. Should this bill pass then there is a 180 day period to get the rules and regulations in place and to source a gaming provider to partner up with. The bill sets the age of legal gambling to just 18 and not the normal 21, and does include terms that restrict gambling to state borders but that do not rule out expansion. Other items included in the bill are wagering limits, self exclusion, depositing time limits and the setting of loss limits. With such a history of negativity regarding online gambling and gambling in general in the state of Hawaii it would take a seriously optimistic individual to believe that this particular bill can succeed where others have failed. It is however being submitted and we can but wait and see and who knows, maybe Hawaii will turn out to be a seriously popular gambling destination in the not too distant future.