Prohibition – between goals and results
By Dan Iliovici, Vice-President ROMBET
To begin with, a brief reminder of the most famous prohibition, the one in the United States of America, from 1920 to 1933.
” Alcohol has been a serious problem for the American administration since the colonial era. Temperance movements gained momentum after the Civil War, when associations such as the Anti-Saloon League or the Women’s Christian Temperance Union developed. The taverns that littered every neighborhood in America were seen as the main source of the nation’s social problems. Social ills such as crime, poverty, marital abuse, and even low worker productivity could be combated by eliminating their source: alcohol consumption. Thus, the 18th Amendment was seen as a “noble experiment” that aimed to change America.”[1]
And as a conclusion, in the same article:
“The great hopes that inspired this experiment perished very quickly. Enforcing the law proved almost impossible. Congress allocated 5 million dollars for this, but it was not enough. Illegal venues – known as speakeasies¬ – have flourished throughout the country. The borders became a sieve through which the alcohol brought from abroad was constantly leaking. Even domestic factories had not completely disappeared. The production, distribution and sale of alcohol have become a real industry – extremely profitable! – for criminal gangs in all major cities. Al Capone – the most famous mobster of the era – became a millionaire in those years.”
” The administration anticipated that these two pieces of legislation [2] will transform the United States of America for the better: first, by eradicating the harmful effects of alcohol”
With all of these famous unintended effects, coupled with the good intentions of the proponents of prohibition, it seems that the temptation of banning/prohibition is quite present to this day. The famous phrase, ”Who does not learn from the mistakes of history, is condemned to repeat them!”, is more relevant than ever. And not only here, and not only in the field of gambling.
So our legislators institute a semi-prohibition on gambling, by banning slots in towns with less than 15,000 inhabitants.
The reason, the justification? Read the so-called “Note of substantiation” of the relevant legislative project. That’s theoretical. Practically, the “engine” of this change was purely electoral. We won’t go into details.
It is still too early to analyze all the implications of this sui generis prohibition, but we can already make some findings and observations vis-a-vis what is said to have been pursued through this normative act, and what is, and will be the situation on the ground in the near future.
1. For the initiators of the law, but also for the vast majority of the public, including in the media debates on the topic of gambling, the slots are the “Duck’s Nail”. The bottom line? We ban gambling, we solve the problem of gambling.
But what do we do with the online slots?! How do we “remove” those from towns with less than 15,000 inhabitants?
The argument of those who support the new regulation: those from villages and communes don’t know how to use smartphones; they don’t know how to play online. So instead of spending their money at the village grocers, they will run to the economat, to buy food for themselves and their family (please, those who have family, because this is also something to discuss). Or they stop at the library or the House of Culture, to get their hands on a book, says a distinguished (recent) politician.
Or do they run to the village tavern?!? Not! That’s not it! That drinking is by no means a problem in our country.
- What will the authorities do with black gambling “offers”?
See the case of American Prohibition. Plus, especially in the field of gambling, we have a very high degree of innovation and inventiveness.
One of the positive effects of any balanced regulation, not just gambling, is the curtailment of the black market. If taxation and all other legislative measures are bearable, rational, and provide a fair competitive environment, it is no longer worth the risk of “working in the dark”.
After the establishment of the “ban on gambling”, the village players themselves will feel frustrated, that they have been cut off from a form of entertainment. That they wouldn’t have been fathers addicted to bread. And they will be ready to try new forms of gambling.
An elementary principle of the market economy should be noted: where there is demand, the supply immediately appears.
3. At the risk of being a bit more insistent, I would ask the governors, in Moromete’s words, what did they base themselves on when they proposed and adopted this kind of measures?
Have they done, or commissioned, any independent study on the prevalence of different types of gambling, on the incidence of gambling problems in our communes and villages?
I’m not talking about a national level study on gambling, something similar to what the people at UK Gambling Commision[3]. That it would only be money, from the over 10 million (?) EUR collected by ONJN for “socially responsible gambling support programs“.
But here too there is a small problem that the governors also decided that 70% of this fund should be transferred to the state budget. That’s it, so we don’t have any more discussions.
In the absence of any such study, how will we evaluate the effects of the restrictive measures adopted? We will go from village to village, let’s see what the former problem players are doing now, what else do they spend their money on, how do they have fun?!
4. Finally, there would be the question of the economic impact of these measures. And it’s not just about the direct effects, significantly reduced tax revenues, but also the horizontal effect, with all related products and services affected by these untimely changes. As I have not heard that any impact study was drawn up, as required by the legislative technique, it was probably based on the principle of “first we cut, and then we measure”. I mean, you can see what will happen… after a while.
All these themes have been presented countless times to politicians, governors. These are matters that require rational discussion, not measures taken at night, based on emotions and… running for votes.
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[1] text taken from historia.ro
[2]Amendment 18, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol, and Amendment 19, which granted women the right to vote
[3] https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/about-us/statistics-and-research
