Without a doubt, online poker is here to stay and it is staying quite successfully too. According to the research firm, River City Group, Internet poker alone is a two billion dollar a year industry, attracting a million players each month. ComScore Media Matrix, which measures all U.S. Internet users at home, work and college locations, reports that, out of a total audience of 165 million, there were more than 29.1 million unique visitors to online gambling sites in just April.

Moreover, according to a recent survey from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, card playing for money is on the rise, most notably amongst the 14 to 22 year age group. The Center’s figures show that in 2004, 11.4 percent of in-school male youth reported betting on cards at least once a week, up from 6.2 percent in 2003. Furthermore, 11.4 percent of these weekly card players were likely to participate in online gambling. Additionally, 43.2 percent of the players who were playing cards for money on a weekly basis were under the age of eighteen. The most popular Internet poker sites, according to one source, include PacificPoker.com and PartyPoker.com, both based in Gibraltar, Empire Poker and PokerRoom, both based in Canada, and Poker World Online Cardroom, based in Jamaica.

It is hard to look at the figures and not be impressed, in spite of the abundant negative aspects associated with the proliferation of online gambling. Just the legal questions alone are enough to give one pause. Questions abound concerning whether or not online gambling is legal, if and how current gambling laws can affect Internet gambling, how enforceable these laws are especially overseas, and whether it is up to individual states or the federal government to determine the legality of online gambling. Questions regarding the social impact of online gambling abound as well. “There’s a lot of concern about whether this is legal, especially when it’s a form of gambling that’s accessible to adolescents,” says Daniel Romer, research director of Annenberg’s Adolescent Risk Communications Institute. Romer points out that, while brick and mortar type casinos are off limits to people under the age of 21, and lottery tickets are sold only to those over 18 years of age, online gambling is basically accessible to anyone with a computer and a Internet connection even if Internet gambling sites do try to screen for underage players. Dan Hunter, a Wharton legal professor, notes that “it’s [online gambling] a big business, widely distributed and badly regulated”.

The U.S. policy on Internet gambling has simply been to consider it illegal and has not even considered the possibility of legalizing and regulating the industry. Basically, U.S. law enforcement targets major site operators and punishes them with stiff penalties, hoping to make examples out of them. Individual bettors are largely ignored. It’s difficult to enforce these policies over seas, however, where the majority of online gambling companies are based and where online gambling is legal.

In contrast, the United Kingdom, has decided to legalize online gambling so that it could regulate the industry and better protect underage players. “In the U.K., the theory is to regulate [online gambling] to prevent underage players,” says Romer.

Keith Whyte, executive director for the National Council on Problem Gambling, points out that legality and enforcement are two different things. “You can say online gambling is illegal, but if you can’t enforce [the law] it doesn’t matter”, he says. Whyte also points out that the biggest fear concerning Internet gambling is that it will create a new generation of problem gamblers.