Study Calls for Greater VLT Player Protection
May 29 - A major study on all forms of gambling in Alberta will be released later this year by the Alberta Gaming Research Institute at the University of Lethbridge.
The co-ordinator of the institute, Robert Williams, meanwhile recommended that before Alberta provides 6,000 new gambling machines for the province's gamblers, it will need to put effective consumer protection measures in place.
Some of the measure put forward by Williams include thumb identification or even the more contemporary iris scanning.
Williams believes that these types of measures will drastically reduce the number of gambling addicts in Alberta, and across Canada if they are adopted country wide.
In the meantime, the provinces' liquor and gambling authority announced that it would be spending millions to replace aging VLTs at the cost of $30,000 per machine.
It has invited expressions of interest from different parties to bid for the tender.
Williams has other recommendations for the gambling authority, such as allowing machines to take smaller bets so that consumers will not be tempted to gamble too much, and offering smaller payouts.
"It's not how much or how often you bet," said Williams, "it's whether your gambling causes significant problems."
Williams made no apologies about his opinion about the gambling activities of the province and said of the authorities: "If you are going to be in such an unsavoury business, they you have a moral obligation to make those products as safe as you can."
Speaking of the province's voluntary exclusion program, Williams said he believed it had failed.
