Majority disagree with casino legalisation proposal: Nida Poll

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A majority of people do not agree with a proposal to legalise casinos and are of the opinion that other forms of gambling such as video and online games should also not be made legal, according to the result of a survey conducted by National Institute of Development Administration, or Nida Poll.

The poll was conducted by telephone interviews between Dec 6-8 with 1,318 people aged 18 and over of various levels of education and occupations throughout the country.A large majority - 93.70% - of the people polled said they never visited a casino; 4.40% said they used to do that while abroad; 0.91% said they did that in the country; and, 0.08% were not sure about this.Asked to comment on a proposal for casinos to be legalised, a majority - 56.83% - did not agree with it, saying that casinos were sources of family conflicts, debt problems and crimes. Moreover, Thailand is a Buddhist country were where casinos should not be allowed to exist.On the other side, 21.25% agreed very much with the proposal, saying that with casinos operating legally in the country the government would be able to collect taxes from them and Thai people would not have to travel abroad to play gambling and, although casinos are not allowed by the law, there were casinos running illegally in the country anyway; and 18.13% were in moderate agreement, reasoning that casinos could help spur the country's economy and allow the money to circulate in the country.The rest, 3.79%, had no comment or were not interested.

Asked about video games and online gambling, 68.51% said both should not be legalised; 23.37% said they both should be legalised; 2.28% said video games should be legalised; and 2.05% said online gambling should be made legal. The rest, 3.79%, had no comment.